


Relatives in Spacetime

by feldman, Thassalia



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 1950s, Asgardian Magic, Cold War, Complete, Espionage, F/F, F/M, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Cuba, Red Room, SHIELD, Sex Farce, Time Travel, period-typical drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-08-27 23:42:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 85,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8422201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feldman/pseuds/feldman, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thassalia/pseuds/Thassalia
Summary: That time Odin made our intrepid trio crash the rocky courtship of Maria and Howard Stark, which had already been crashed by Peggy and the Cold War--AKA, that time everyone was in an espionage sex farce except Tony.





	1. Catch You on the Flip Side - 20th Century

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes you aim for a lighthearted sexy old-school spy romp. And then realize partway through you've watched too much Doctor Who for this to be easy for you, and thought too much about these characters for it to be easy for them. This is a complete work being posted in parts.

[](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/rubberneck/media/Relatives%20in%20Spacetime.png.html)

### CH1 - Catch You on the Flip Side - 20th Century

“Back.” Odin sprawls on his throne with the smug delight of an old man watching Judge Judy. "Back to when you were a glimmer in your father's eye."

Tony has been respectful, diplomatic, he really has, but for fuck's sake. "Narrow it down some, dad was 85% glimmer before he met mom."

Odin laughs like the asshole he is and says, "Glimmer in your _mom's_ , then."

“Hey--”

~*~

Maria is a practical woman.

She knew before she hit high school that the nuns were grooming her for their ranks, seeing a girl with brains to spare and little interest in hiding that fact. Sure she leaned hard toward mathematics and physics, but she knew her catechism and was a sweet kid, and her best bet for being able to use the gifts god gave her was not to be someone's wife running a household. This girl was savvy enough - and when you scratched the surface, bossy enough - to solve problems and run institutions.

Women generally got to run institutions by being nuns or being rich. Maria was the fifth child of a mill foreman, and she could do that math in second grade. Maria sidled up to the nuns and got a stellar Jesuit education, but she wasn't convinced she should become a bride of Jesus. She thought maybe spinsterhood would be okay, if she had interesting work.

That was the sacrifice she was willing to make.

That focus got her to Smith, then to IBM, then on a team building a language for computers, and that...that was worth all the times she'd been the fourth wheel on a double date, all the insinuations in letters from her mother. That was incredible. The answers you could find, once you figured out how to ask the questions, were theoretically limitless.

She'd met Howard in passing, zipping through the lab on a vapor trail of genius, technical patter, and cologne that smelled like citrus and solvents and fine leather. He’d cornered her in the afternoon, and they’d spent a couple hours hotly debating if and how one could ditch punchcards entirely. Talking to Howard Stark was like flying a kite in spring; soaring that threatened to break the string, disastrous plummets toward reality, then great swoops that burned your palm as you fought to keep the kite at least tenuously tied to the earth.

She didn't expect him to remember her. Honestly she would have sworn he didn’t catch her name.

~*~

Howard had wanted to offer Maria Carbonell a job the day he met her, but the consulting negotiations with IBM were delicate. He couldn’t headhunt while he was a guest at the labs, and she was part of a good team, so he filed her name away to keep tabs on her work, maybe bring her onto the Stark payroll if IBM pulled any shenanigans.

Big Blue treated her well, and that annoyed him.

“I’m going to woo her, Jarvis. I want that woman in my labs, programming my computers.”

“That’s...not where I thought you were going with that, sir.”

“Don’t be crass.” Howard’s brow softened as Jarvis straightened his bow tie. “She’s adorable, but I like that she’s unflappable. She’s brilliant but she’s also got common sense, and that’s--do you think if I offered her her own team?”

“Anything can happen, sir.”

~*~

Maria turns down the team, and the lab, and the budget, and the salary. Maria knows a line when she hears one, and she politely and firmly insists that no, she is flattered but not interested in changing employers.

She really is flattered, even though she knows it’s a tale spun by a debonair devil in a tux, a pumpkin carriage drawn by matched white mice that will disappear at midnight just like the fizzy punch and the businessmen and their wives at this charity gala. He tried to appeal to her mind, her talent, sweep her off her feet and into a _lab_. So what if it’s a thing made of wishes and not bricks?

She takes the compliment anyway.

~*~

He’s persistent, but she’s insistent.

He buys her dinner one evening by means of walking next to her when she exits the building and getting her talking about machine compilers as he steers her into a supper club.

She balks when he goes to take her coat, but allows him to make the point, “Can’t two people be hungry together?”

She gives him a sly smile, indulgent with his bullshit for the moment, the way she lets him spin out a theory before yanking him back to practicality. “Sure they can.”

“Of course they can,” he says lightly, “it’s the human condition.”

Her eyes narrow, and oh, she sees right through him but not in a bad way, more like he’s a tropical fish tank and she’s a cat. “So we’ve established that we’re both human, and both hungry.”

“So what should we do about it?”

“You’re the genius, Mr. Stark.”

“So are you, Miss Carbonell, don't think I haven't noticed. I'm very keen, when I pay attention.” Howard’s fingers itch. The wool at her collar is a bit worn where it touches her neck. It's odd because he knows she makes a good salary at Big Blue - he's offered to triple it - but she's squeezing another winter out of this coat anyway, mended at a shoulder seam. It's not the frugality, it's the care, her fingers putting in tiny uneven stitches. It hits him like any inspiration, like cold water tingling. “But I don’t want you to work for me.”

Maria shrugs the coat from his grip and turns, the swing of it lashing his legs.

“Hear me out--”

~*~

Howard has never been in a negotiation like the one Maria put him through over the summer. After winkling her into a supper club and withdrawing his spurned offers of employment, he convinces her out to dinner a few more times.

He choses places with slow luxurious service, places with shows because she likes music and he likes the chance to pull her onto the dance floor. He gets her talking, and sometimes they get to debating, and occasionally they get to arguing, and he loves all of it. She can hold her liquor and she definitely holds her own, and the second time he opens the car door and escorts her up the steps of the brownstone where she rents an apartment, she lingers with her key in hand and gives him a long look like she’s cancelling terms left and right and whittling him down to his basic equation.

“We should see more of each other,” she says.

It isn’t until Jarvis pulls away from the curb that he realizes he'd been so delighted by that development he hadn’t gone in for a kiss. “Son of a bitch.”

Howard’s familiar with the coy, and the naive, and the mercenary. It’s a game, or a dance, or a little vaudeville skit, or a shopping trip. Howard likes the flirtation and the chase. Hell, he loves the shopping trips to be frank, and maybe it’s because he always kind of wanted to play with dolls a little bit, but it’s satisfying to take a beautiful woman and set her off in pretty clothes like a jewel.

Jewelry stores on the other hand...there’s a reason he set up the Tiffany bracelet system years ago, and it’s because seeing precious metals wasted like that bores him to tears. Gold should be conducting electricity.

So maybe he should have realized something was going on when he took her out a third time and spent half of dinner thinking this woman should really have a set of pearls. But she declines his shopping trips with the same aplomb she’d refused his job offers with, and he thinks, well, just because she doesn’t go to mass as much as she tells her mother doesn't mean she doesn't have convictions. She's a good woman and he loves her company. Some women just want to laugh and dance.

~*~

Maria had decided long ago that she was not cut out for the nunnery, but it took her a bit longer to come around to the decision that, despite dismal marriage prospects and little interest in wiping noses and cooking roasts, she was not going to die a virgin, by god.

Once she made that decision, though? She followed through.

~*~

It turns out Maria is not one of those women who just wants to laugh and dance after all. But she doesn’t warm up or combust or even catch fire. Maria goes off like an A-bomb.

One moment she’s puttering in her little kitchenette brewing a pot of coffee, the next she’s snapped off the burner and landed astride his lap, cheeks bright red, eyes glassy, demanding with her smart mouth, “Am I right to assume you’re the kind of man who has rubbers handy?”

And okay, yes, of course he is, but the slow waltz he was moving through has now become a hundred yard dash and while everything he’s been itching for is now squirming in his lap with her hands _in his shirt,_ he cups her delicate shoulders and can’t believe his own (usually smart) mouth when he says, “Yeah, but maybe we should just fool around a little first?”

He gets there, rest assured, but he takes his time. Does the job right. He’s a gentleman. It’s not because she’s got the better of him.

He suggests the trip to Havana a couple months after that. He likes her, he wants to rhumba with her somewhere warm and sultry before she bundles back up for a New York winter. And when he points out that she doesn’t have anything in her closet suitable for the trip, she finally lets him buy her a wardrobe. Put a gorgeous chassis around that hot rod motor.

~*~

Tony staggers toward the bar, a scotch-seeking missile in a suit and tie.

Bruce drops into a white wicker fan chair and holds his hand out in front of his face, assessing the shakes and regaining control of his breathing. He looks down at the slacks and white dress shirt he was not wearing a moment ago. He unbuttons the collar. There’s a handkerchief in his pocket, large and linen, so he wipes his brow.

Natasha is planted in the middle of the lobby, sun dress and string shoes, hair in soft waves that shift across her back as she sways in place like a buoy. He can’t tell if she’s doing recon or if she’s about to hit the floor, but she steadies and her hand comes to rest on the pocketbook hanging off her shoulder. When she moves, it’s with a gliding step he’s never seen her use, and she takes the seat next to him like a bird alighting.

There’s a small table between them, green glass ashtray and a small dish of matchbooks for the Golden Garden Club, which is apparently the hotel they’ve found themselves in. Bruce isn’t a smoker, but he almost wishes he were at times like this.

“I wonder, do we have reservations as well?” Natasha clicks open the pocketbook, cautious, then snaps it shut. She says, “Translation.”

Bruce thinks for a moment, catching that this is a delicate situation over and above the apparent shifts in space, time and wardrobe. He pulls his glasses off and finds they’re heavy black plastic, glass lenses, but the left hinge is looser than the right just like his real pair. “You’re armed still.”

Natasha hums. She’s wearing lipstick, which he’s never seen her do, or at least never such an obvious shade, but her eye makeup is softer. “Not the one I carried into the meeting, but close enough. Auto, different caliber...But for the time period,” she tilts her head, “similar stopping power to what I had.”

Bruce cleans his glasses and puts them back on. The shakes have subsided, leaving a chilly dread. “We should go find Tony.”

Tony is in a small booth in the corner of the lounge, cradling an untouched pour in a rocks glass and staring daggers at the back of the sole man at the bar, in a mirrored pose over his own empty glass.

Natasha slides next to him, and Bruce slips into the other side. Tony sets the glass in front of her with a small shake of his head, as if it had simply manifested like his cobalt silk tie, but he hadn't ordered it and he wasn't going to drink it.

Maybe it had.

“Havana. September, 1952. It rained almost constantly, she said. Hadn't occurred to me, until now, it's off season. Of course it was rainy. They weren't coming here for the beach. Or the casinos; Mom felt you should only gamble what you're willing to throw away.” Tony tries for upbeat and instead lands in derisive. “This is the Havana fling that ended my father’s long string of Havana flings. This is when he proposed to my mother.”

Bruce rubs his forehead, murmuring, “Thor is the only decent Asgardian. The rest can go hang.”

“I hear they have a big ash exactly for that purpose,” Natasha herself doesn't know if she's trying to soothe or make a joke, but Bruce offers a smile through his wince.

Tony reaches absently into the inner pocket of his suit jacket, the gesture so ingrained that when he pulls out a slim calfskin wallet instead of his Stark phone, they all gape equally.

“Translation,” Bruce drains the glass and exhales scotch fumes out of his nose.

Tony says “Jarvis,” like he’s being strangled.

Natasha says, “Tony, it’s okay,” as Bruce follows his gaze to the doorway, and Tony says, “No, really. _Jarvis_.”

~*~

The man is slim, serious, and he stops just inside the hotel lounge to straighten an already perfect jacket and tie. It’s really just a pause to assess the man at the bar.

Natasha sits up, blinking. Edwin Jarvis was a background figure in the SSR and early SHIELD files. A batman during the war, and while English, and a butler afterward, he was most definitely not an English-trained butler. He approaches Howard Stark, hands clasped behind his back in a pose that is deferential on the surface but loaded with gentleness.

Howard gestures for him to sit, and their conversation is sparse and inaudible.

What was it about Starks that they could only open up to people they paid to care? That those people did care, would often care without the money, that was one of the miraculous mysteries, yet they did. But the necessity of literally repaying the kindness, that seemed to be an essential layer of buffering for both Howard and Tony for a long time. Maybe that was all they felt they had to offer in return.

“He looks like somebody killed his puppy.” Bruce observes. “Poor bastard.”

Natasha tries to be delicate in counterpoint, “How confident are you that she said yes?”

Tony clenches his jaw. “Well this morning I’d’ve said a hundred percent.”

~*~

“Clara Vodaskaya and Boris Yumatov,” The desk clerk gestures them over and hands a heavy brass key to Natasha and another to Bruce, with apologies for the delay in check in due to housekeeping.

It turns out they do have reservations, or more correctly, the two people they've displaced had reservations. He watches her for cues, and sees the shift in her facial muscles as she plots out a character and a course from the moment the names drop like a decrypt key.

“Do you have a third room? We have another in our party,” Natasha asks, her Spanish softened with a Slavonic bluntness to the vowels that plays to Bruce as deliberate, and weirdly reminds him of a carioca accent.

“Our available rooms are all filled, apologies. Off-season renovations...” The clerk shakes his head. “Señorita Vodaskaya, your bags have already been taken up to your room.”

Señor Yumatov's bags had been missing on arrival, it turns out, news that makes Natasha pensive as they return to Tony.

“What do you mean, ‘the two of us have rooms'?” Tony says, “At the risk of sounding narcissistic, what about me?”

Bruce shrugs eloquently, “Given the situation at hand...you might not be...real enough to have to displace anyone.”

“There's a chance it doesn't play out the same way.” Natasha adds, “You're a tangible possibility, but by no means certain.”

“So, what, I'm supposed to sway her? Be dad’s wingman?” Tony shakes his head, unpersuaded. “I trust women. It's her choice.”

“We could find ourselves in a very different timeline.” Bruce speaks to his hands, fingers threaded together between his knees, his voice quiet and carefully neutral. Everyone is painfully aware of the pros and cons of Tony negating his own existence, why a person might take a while to weigh that decision in the best interest of their loved ones and humanity at large. “Cf. Unforeseen consequences, monkey's paws, etc.”

Natasha has never heard someone use a Latin citing phrase in extemporaneous speech before.

“Thank you for your input, Clarence.”

“You know the ending, but not their whole story. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I was a surprise, actually.” Tony shoves his hands in his pockets as he paces. “Dad was not a guy keen on inherited wealth, even before he had a shiftless son. He was not looking for an heir, despite the gossip writers’ theories. He ate heirs for breakfast on his way to the top. I think mom changed his mind about having a family, but for a long time it just wasn’t happening. So in the scheme of things, I slipped into this world just under the wire to begin with.”

~*~

Maria thinks that when Howard drifts away, she’d like to keep being friends with Angie and Peggy, and she’s made an effort to court them a little since she met them. It’s been difficult to find women she has much in common with, and to find a pair of them has been honestly worth going to hell for, if hell does in fact exist and cares how far apart her knees have gone.

Very far apart, as it turns out. Maybe that’s been worth it too.

Peggy is off somewhere with the Jarvises or Howard, so Maria is lounging in the afternoon sun with Angie on the verandah their room opens out onto, sharing a pitcher of icy lemonade.

The two women who came to give them pedicures have finished and left, possibly earlier than they would have if Angie hadn’t kept insisting they have some lemonade. Maria understands that service makes some people who work hard for a living uncomfortable; it’s one of the things she likes about Howard, for all that he’s got a butler and more money than he can count, he hasn't forgotten that, still sees the humanity in working people. Maria had slipped the salon ladies a fat tip at the door, subtle the way she’d learned from Howard, and they seemed relieved that they weren’t just going to be offered beverages they probably can’t accept.

“This place, Maria, it’s unreal.” Angie spreads her toes, bright polish the color of muskmelon shining in the sun. “Rain or no rain. It even smells good.”

“Certainly better than summer in New York.” The palm leaves are still dripping from the morning’s storm, but the air smells of flowers and greenery, the humidity like a balm instead of a suffocation. “Though I think our toes will take forever to dry.”

“Eh,” Angie shrugs.

“Exactly.” Maria sighs, trying to soak in everything of this interlude, this little escape from life. “I want to keep a piece of this place with me forever.”

Angie hums and then starts crooning a song from _Brigadoon_ , “This can’t be love, because I feel so welllll...no sobs, no sorrows, no sighs…”

Maria slips her sunglasses from her hair to rest on her nose, not wanting to think about the upcoming winter when all of this will be a memory, when she'll wake up alone again instead of to Howard's endearingly grumpy sleeping face.

~*~

Natasha has gone up to explore the rooms, leaving Tony and Bruce in the bar.

“You know,” Bruce says, and the stretch of syllables suggests he knows what a bad idea he’s about to put forth. “You could simply ask him.”

Tony quirks an eyebrow. “What, like, ‘hey, did the love of your life just kick you to the curb’?”

He shrugs, thinking that in this case both men would be nursing the injury of spurned affection; one for a would-be fiance, the other for a cold father. Bruce also thinks that a part of him would jump at the chance to see his own father reeling from an emotional hurt. At least in Tony’s case it would be more than vengeful glee. “Stranger bonds than that have been formed over whiskey and heartbreak.”

“Have you never seen _Back to the Future_? Seriously.”

“What does it hurt to ask?” Bruce is frankly curious, but not enough to go around Tony and talk to Howard Stark himself.

Natasha returns with a sun hat in her hand, but her face is pale.

“There’s a double bed and a couch in Boris’ room, so at least you won’t be sleeping on the floor,” she says to Tony.

“Any other surprises?”

She pauses long enough for both men to turn to her quizzically. “These aren’t Russian tourists on holiday.”

Bruce’s mouth turns sour. “Of course they aren’t.”

She sighs, “The thing is, if there are spies here, odds are there’s a reason. Cuba was a hot spot in the 1950s, unrest and political infighting, and quite a few missions and counter-missions that never made it into the public record.”

Bruce catches on quickly, and attributes Tony’s blank look to his worry about potentially not existing by the end of the week.

“So it’s possible that whoever we replaced had a hand in some sort of...intelligence operation?”

She nods. “And we should find out what. I have a few...ideas.”

Tony is focused again on watching the tableau at the bar, Jarvis coaxing his father to a table in the corner.

Howard Stark waves to the bartender, who brings over a bottle of clear Havana Club rum and an ice bucket, five glasses and five glass bottles of Coca-Cola.

“The other thing is that the Soviets obviously weren’t the only players on the stage at that point.”

“Bingo,” Tony says slowly, as Howard and Jarvis are joined by three women, the tallest gesturing for them all to sit, a second moving to kiss Jarvis on the cheek.

“Now that’s just mean,” Natasha mutters and slinks a little behind a plant. Bruce looks blank, searching between her face and Tony’s for clarification.

“Margaret Carter,” she says, “Special Agent, Founder of SHIELD.”

“Peggy Carter,” Bruce says. “Well, fuck.”

“That we are,” Natasha agrees. “And that means we need to find out what the Americans and the Russians want here.”

~*~

“You don’t need tech to gather intel.”

Tony yelps, hands coming up to protect his head too late to stop her from yanking, “So what, you’re going to tape that to the door?”

“No,” Natasha snorts. “I just wanted to pull your pigtails. For this wood I need a lighter color than dyed black.”

“I’m ignoring your insinuation.” Tony watches her sort through the crown of Bruce’s head for a suitable white one to pluck. “You haven’t shared with the team how you came by the intel you already have; the number station to monitor, the contact to look for tonight.”

Bruce sits still as she selects and plucks. He's methodically wrapping magnetic wire around the tuning rod of the snazzy Emerson Bakelite radio that had pride of place on her bedside table. 

Tony and Bruce's room features a small black and white television instead, but that can't be adjusted for shortwave reception.

She runs the hair along the tip of her tongue and lays it across the gap between the French doors to the balcony, pressing it down to stick. Bruce is watching her now, too.

There are topics they do not openly discuss, things that are not fair game for casual conversation. Tony's relationship with alcohol. Bruce's childhood. How Natasha came to be the Black Widow. The closest they've come is while reviewing footage of her fighting style to develop better equipment. Tony had paused the video and just stared at her, considering serums and timelines, while Bruce scrubbed the clip back and forth until coming to the conclusion, “ _Yeah, right there? Even with flawless form, a bog-standard human would have had their arm torn clean off.”_

She straightens and leans back against the dresser. “I’ve run KGB ops. In Cuba.” She wets her lips, almost agitated, and that’s what makes the hair on Tony’s neck prickle. “Batista-era Cuba. I have...scraps of memories...a few drop locations, the shortwave station...that’s the extent of what I remember of Havana. The rest I’ve been piecing together.”

“You didn’t displace someone else, did you?” Bruce looks around the room, looks pointedly at the nondescript cream dress and low-heeled walking shoes she’d changed into that fit her perfectly. “This was your room reservation. Your mission.”

Natasha presses her lips back between her teeth, bloodless white flash as she releases them. “Mine and my backup, Bogdan, posing as brother and sister. My cover was a young widow recently out of mourning, and in need of cheering up. But I’d already killed Bogdan in Miami under separate orders.”

Bruce emits a small chuckle, as if occupying the wake of a dead man amuses him.

“I see,” Tony pulls out his wallet and thumbs through the bills and a wad of traveler’s checks. “I’m going to assume that you’ve got dancing shoes tucked away somewhere amongst the cyanide pills and one-time pads and little red books. Bruce, finish up, we need to go pretend our luggage got lost.”

~*~

After a chat with the concierge as a taxi is hailed, Tony takes him through a whirlwind of shopping in downtown Havana, starting with a series of shops and quick assessments by tailors, winding up through shirts and slacks, a lightweight suit, slim leather belt, swim trunks, thin cotton pyjamas. Everything is to be delivered to the hotel.

Bruce starts to feel like this has been a long time coming, like it’s an excuse to finally clothe him according to Tony’s sense of style, translated.

“I mean, you can’t really object, there’s still a lot of drape in fifties menswear, that’s close enough to baggy, right? You’ve still got room, maybe just for smuggling plums instead of shoplifting watermelons.”

“Are you ashamed to be seen with me?” Bruce asks, tongue in cheek.

Tony lays a hand on his shoulder and then just flicks his eyebrows with jerk of his head. “I would be if I gave a shit what people think.”

“Fine, if it makes you feel better. Though we may not be here for very long.”

Tony grins, “I’m gonna get you a hat.”

They wind up the afternoon at the downtown Havana Woolworth’s, Bruce trailing behind Tony as he hunts through the aisles with the honed purpose he usually exhibits when doing engine or robot maintenance, plucking hygiene products off the shelves like specific tools.

Bruce carries their booty; a pair of toothbrushes and safety razors, Pepsodent, mugs of Old Spice shaving soap, Lustre-Creme shampoo, and several types of pomade and hair dressing.

“And here I thought your look was effortless,” Bruce juggles the armful to accommodate the addition of Vitalis and Brylcreem to the Wildroot and Groom & Clean.

Tony narrows his eyes at Bruce’s unruly hair, “I just don’t know what will tame that. If anything.”

“I thought that’s what the hat was for?”

Tony pats his arm and tucks into the pile a couple black combs stamped on the spine, _UNBREAKABLE_.

~*~

“Batista is a tyrant,” Peggy says bluntly, “but the state department likes the allowances that the infighting gives them. I need real intelligence in order to make a case for or against intervention.”

Howard sprawls in the deck chair, his suit rumpling. She fights the urge to shoo him away. Instead she peers through the open French doors into the suite, where Angie is mixing a pitcher of martinis at the bar and humming a showtune.

“We’re celebrating,” Angie says, indicating the Jarvises, who are sitting companionably on the settee reading the paper, “one last hurrah before you settle down. Live a little.”

“The engagement story’s a cover,” Peg emphasizes, “an excuse why my friends might take me somewhere warm and fun. It’s not the real reason I’m here.”

“I actually am on vacation.” Angie grins, easing the sad knot of dread in Peggy’s heart, if only a little. Cover aside, they are at a crossroads, and that’s the real reason Angie is here with her. One last hurrah before things change.

Howard emits a forlorn groan. The Jarvises become even more absorbed in the _New York Times_ they’ve parceled out between them, and Angie smirks. Howard moans again, deliberately melodramatic.

“Oh for heaven’s sake,” Peggy says, impatient. “Your world will not end if Maria turns you down.”

“I implicitly trust your judgement, you know that. But in this particular case, you’re wrong.”

“Do you think it’s possible that you can bemoan your love life and simultaneously help your country?”

“I don’t know, Peg. I can’t even get the conversation going, she thwarts me at every turn.”

Peggy’s tone is dry, “Must be terribly frustrating.”

“It’s like she knows what I’m going to say and she doesn’t even want to hear it.”

Ana peers over her paper with the expression of a mother watching her child wobble toward a tree on a bike. Edwin looks pained but keeps his eyes on the newsprint.

“Spring it on her.” Angie says, offering Howard one of the martinis. “No lead in, no song and dance, just lay it all out. What you want. _Why_.”

Howard straightens the line of his slacks. “And what if she says no?”

“Of course she’s going to say no. That’s why she’s avoiding the question in the first place.”

Howard’s eyes narrow at Angie, but she sips her martini, defiant.

“Right.” Peggy reaches for her own glass, driven to drink at three in the bloody afternoon, “moving on…”

~*~

The maid is in her teens. Natasha uses her most halting, accented Spanish to ask about a store for hairpins and setting lotion.

“The rain,” she says to the girl, “it’s so wet here, and my hair...I wasn’t prepared.” She pats the bottom of her set curls, and the girl smiles, continues to unpack Natasha’s dresses.

The things in the suitcase don’t feel like hers, but as she touches each one, there’s a sense memory of what it does, of a mission it was used for: an earpiece that futzed out when she crouched high in the ceiling ducts of an embassy party, a tiny camera pressing into the soft flesh of her breast as she hid under a desk, a length of wire threaded through handles as a quick garotte.

She’d killed a woman with this wire…or did she end up having to use the dagger instead? She wishes she could remember the whys and wherefores, if only to assuage her own curiosity.

Six months ago, she’d written off her utility as a spy when she’d effectively burned herself, blown her covers, and exposed Hydra.

Since then she’s been slowly regrouping, rebuilding, finding...connection, routine, friendship. Other things, like sitting across from Bruce Banner on a regular basis, close enough to touch, to trust, and applying her vast skill set of persuasion and manipulation to fortify his toolbox of control. She finds, more often than not, that when she looks into Bruce to gauge his emotional state, she’s also checking in on her own, soothing herself with that connection. She pushes that thought away, turns back to the maid and her clear adoration of a rayon dress printed with delicate butterflies. 

“Estos vestidos son preciosos,” the girl says shyly.

Natasha nods. “Gracias,” and takes one out, holds it up to the girl.

It’s a youthful day dress for Natasha, but for a sixteen year old it’s bright and bold, yet still sweet.

“Would you like to wear it,” she asks, “to go out, dance with your boyfriend?”

The girls eyes go wide. The offer is extravagant, but the maid is young enough to be swayed by offers that are larger than life, instead of wary.

“A trade,” she says, “If you can tell me about the woman with the brown hair.” She holds up her hand, indicating Peggy’s height, her bright red lipstick, her confident walk.

“I like how she does her hair,” Natasha says, tilting her head in close like they’re conspiring.

The girl, Lur, doesn’t know where Peggy has gotten her pomade, but she does share the titillating news that Miss Carter has been seen coming and going at odd hours, and unaccompanied. That her brother claims to have seen her at one of the makeshift nightclubs in the sugar cane camps, but Luis, her brother, has been known to exaggerate and has been trying to finagle a ride in the roadster Mr. Stark has rented for his time here and so she doesn’t really trust his stories, but still, interesting, no?

Eventually, she tells Lur to come back at the dinner hour, when Natasha is out, so she can borrow the dress along with some of the underpinnings. 

When the girl is gone, Natasha sits down on the bed, sifting through the remaining undergarments and nightclothes, contemplating changing out of the constrictive girdle and bra that help her sundress fit and flare, but the discomfort grounds her, reminds her of who and where she is. She unpacks stockings and garters, a nightgown that looks like hope and desire in robin's egg blue, and a swimsuit with hidden pockets in the bodice that she remembers going missing all those years ago.

She hangs up the robes and wrappers and the light jacket, places gloves and bags in a drawer and considers, briefly, how the suitcase had held so many things. Later tonight, a different maid will lay out nightclothes for her, and if she’s able to time it right, she can ask, subtly, about the other guests staying in the hotel, their mores and habits. She needs to pick up additional stockings, a pair of good heels, a hat to leave behind on the bed, other types of bribery to speak to the desires of older women, more seasoned or experienced than young Lur.

Natasha knows, without it being quite a memory, that these subtle personal manipulations were part of the skills that had set her apart from her peers--her ability to watch, to learn from those around her. That she’d been able to shed indoctrination in favor of improvisation and evolve from her experiences. She’d learnt to rely on the actions of service staff, of housekeepers, and gardeners, and all those who made the world function. The things laundresses knew, phew, dirty linen indeed.

The Soviets had been so focused on not believing in class divides that they’d been blind to how they drove behaviour around the world. Even in Moscow.

She gets up, freshens her makeup, adds a small bug to her purse along with a thick wad of cash and several packets of cigarettes. The bug is only useful if she can get the transmission to work and broadcast into her room, and she can get Stark on that if she decides it’s worth doing. She doesn’t necessarily want the Soviets to hear whatever it is Peggy Carter is up to, presuming she’s here on more than vacation.

But, opportunities often present themselves. She tries to channel the cocksure young woman that she knows she must have been, and slips out of the room to chat with the kitchen staff.

~*~

Bruce tries to find the best angle for the hat. It is a natty touch, and he likes it in spite of himself. 

He’s trying to catch sight of his profile in the lobby mirror, adjusting the brim when he sees Tony’s retreating back.

He doffs the hat, following him into the garden.

Tony’s hand is out to Edwin Jarvis, who sits at a small table under the arbor in the garden, taking tea with his wife.

“Hate to interrupt,” he says, bold as brass, “but I saw you earlier with Howard Stark. Meant to introduce myself then, but I wasn’t sure it was really him.”

Jarvis draws himself up tight, wary, lips compressed.

“Sorry,” Tony says, “not trying to be a creep. I’m family. Distant family, but family nonetheless. Seen more of Howard in the paper than in person the past twenty years, though. But it is him, right?”

Jarvis exchanges a look with his wife, who seems more amused than anything else.

Tony looks back over his shoulder, gestures Bruce over.

“I’m Ed,” he says. “Eddie Stark, Bel Air King of Paramus. I own the dealership, franchised out.”

Jarvis finally gestures to the chairs opposite, and Tony slides in, all oily charm.

“Edwin Jarvis. My wife, Ana.” 

Tony kisses her hand, of course he does, and waves Bruce into the remaining seat.

“Don’t want to interrupt you,” he says, “This is my doctor. Heart condition. He comes with me when I travel. Airline lost our luggage--who’d a thought, huh?”

Bruce is left wondering how to introduce himself. Is he Bruce? Is he Boris? Is he really fucking doing this?

“Pleasure,” he says to the couple, who still look a little stunned.

Jarvis stands to offer his hand to shake, “I’m very sorry, I didn’t catch your name, Dr.?”

“Call me Hank,” comes out of his mouth, and he shrugs at Tony’s pained smile, “I’m on vacation.”

Tony’s one leg is bouncing under the table, hidden from the Jarvises as Ana gestures to the waiter for two more cups.

“Ana and I were discussing the local music,” Edwin says. “Part of our interest in accompanying Mr. Stark here. Have you been out, seen any of the orchestras or bands?”

Tony shakes his head, says not yet, but Bruce interrupts, “I've got a feeling you’ve got a spring in your step, Mrs. Jarvis.”

She grins. “It is true. And I'm tired of sitting around, talking about the sights. I’m ready to have fun.”

Bruce says, “We’re fun.”

“That has not been my experience,” Tony says to Bruce in an undertone, as Edwin pours them tea.

“We can be fun,” he concedes, because he feels loose and ornery and wants to push at Tony. Talking to this couple gives him an itch, like looking at a distorted mirror. Seeing Tony’s actual life translated, digging into his roots, it’s being taken home to meet the family. Bruce reminds himself he doesn’t have a good track record in these types of situations. “And I heard Clara studied dance when she was a kid.”

Tony coughs, only millimeters from the sip of tea that would have come shooting out of his nose, and okay, maybe Bruce did time that, only thwarted by Tony being on guard in general.

“I know you’re on vacation, but Clara and I are actually working.” He explains to the Jarvises, “Making business contacts, import/export, we’re getting into auto accessories and this is an untapped market.”

Ana and Edwin don’t even look at each other, but somehow silently confer and agree. Ana tells them about the tables Howard has reserved that night at the Tropicana. “Perez Prado and His Orchestra, the early show at ten. Please come with us, bring Miss Clara, we’d love to meet anyone who can keep up with the Bel Air King of Paramus.”

“Love to.” Edwin adds, “There’s more to life than business, after all.”

~*~

“So my crack about the dancing shoes,” Tony begins, “is now an earnest question.”

Bruce doffs his hat onto the dresser and leans against the wall, hands loose in his pockets as Tony briefs her on how tea with the Jarvises escalated to evening plans.

Natasha’s pleasantly surprised at Tony’s cover; a plausible sketch that takes advantage of the reluctance to say you’ve forgotten a distant relative, but with a built-in reassurance that said relative is comfortable enough not to be sniffing for a handout. Having an in with the principal players is a boon, but she’s concerned about Tony’s ability to handle this in any professional way. “Getting this close to them, you’re playing with explosives.”

“Possibly literally in dad’s case.”

“I’m serious, this is a risk. You absolutely cannot break cover, no matter what baggage this dredges up.”

“It was just an introduction, maybe a chat. They were right there, alive, and...it got out of hand after we sat down. I know music is not a neutral topic for my mom, but I’d forgotten Ana shared her passion for it, and _someone_ mentioned dancing.”

“Did he, now?”

“I was trying to be friendly, to make a good impression.” Bruce is examining the brim of his hat, but the rumple of a hidden smirk is still apparent. “You do that when you meet someone’s family. Ana likes me.”

“Ana is amused by us, and probably wants to show us to Peggy.” Tony sucks at his teeth. “She doesn’t buy that you can only dance box step, by the way. She thinks it’s an excuse to get Clara to teach you.”

“I was with you the whole time, she said no such thing.”

“I can read her. She’ll probably bring popcorn tonight.”

“Enough!” Natasha had killed the real Boris Yumatov in Florida back in mid-August 1952, under orders because he’d been mortally impolitic. Working the mission without a gopher had been inconvenient, but nothing like flying blind with two amateurs running amuck. “We’re going dancing with Peggy Carter, too? How did this seem like a good idea to you?”

“Well,” Tony flings a hand toward Bruce, “My Voice of Reason is apparently _on vacation_ , and I’ve got ‘Hank’ instead.”

“Don’t pin this on me, you’re a big boy.” 

Natasha reigns them in harder. “Peggy Carter isn’t down here to get away from it all,” she says. “While you two were shopping, I made some inquiries. She goes out alone at odd hours, slipping out the back through the restaurant, has her own transportation.”

“Well, you can do a soft interrogation tonight,” Tony says, his smirk flatter than normal. 

She emphasizes, “While you concentrate on being Eddie from Paramus, New Jersey.”

“That’s no way to talk to your boss, Clara,” Tony says, “I _am_ the Bel Air King.”

“I give you points for remembering at least part of my cover.” Natasha says. Then walking toward Bruce, “Hank? Really?”

He shrugs.

“You know, in the past, when given a single alias not more than a few letters removed from your very own name, you’ve had to be forcibly reminded that someone’s talking to you.” She gently pokes him in the chest for emphasis. “Now you’ve got three people to be.”

“Four,” Tony says, “potentially.”

“I’m as likely to fuck up three as one,” Bruce says, looking down at her finger jabbing him, “And I felt like a Hank in that moment.”

He wraps his hand around hers, and gently stops her from poking him again. His grip is warm, firm, his thumb brushing over hers, and it’s Stark’s curiously crinkled brow that causes her to withdraw from the touch and shake it off.


	2. Dancing with the Starks - Sunday, Aug. 31, 1952

### CH2 - Dancing with the Starks - Sunday, Aug. 31, 1952

“He’s worse than a girl on prom night,” Natasha mutters. Her own upswept hair is perfect, but she smooths her hand up the back, and Bruce follows the graceful line of her neck. He’s sitting on her bed, idly riffling through the top row of gear in the little red suitcase.

“Have you ever been to a prom?” he asks, curious.

“No, but I’ve watched a bunch of John Hughes movies with Clint. Did you? Go to prom?”

“Yeah.” Bruce pauses. “Kind of on accident.” She raises an eyebrow at him, then smooths a finger over that brow, finishes her lipstick. 

“C’mon Stark,” she mutters. “We’re gonna be late.”

“He wants to look right,” Bruce says a little helplessly, “how do you dress to meet your parents?” It’s why he’s in here. Tony’s jittery costume changes were working his nerves, and he had nothing helpful to offer but space.

He picks up a small metal Bayer aspirin case, slides it open to find two clear capsules and a row of tiny foil wrapped cylinders.

“Plan Z,” Natasha explains, “and microfilm.”

“This looks more like spying than assassination,” he says, “that’s good right?”

“You’re overestimating the difference,” she says, but it’s playful and he finds himself sharing her smile.

He’s aware that it’s a bit twisted to find that tone so appealing, the darkness of the joke almost heady, but he has in fact decided that, being bodily transported back in time to Cuba on the whim of a magical Asgardian bastard, he can give himself a pass for a few indulgences.

One of those indulgences is Natasha putting her foot on a chair and sliding her dress up to secure a very slim knife holster around her thigh, right under the band of the stocking top.

Bruce tells himself he’s estimating the force pulling the silk into points where the garter tabs attach, but he knows he’s just imagining slipping his fingers under those straps. Each leg has two in front and presumably one in back, and they are white as Ivory soap. Her skin is apricot in light contrast.

Her nimble fingers adjust the blocky black design that peeks up from the heel of her shoe and frames the tendon of her ankle, sweeping up into the seam of the stocking. She straightens the line up the muscled curves of calf and thigh, letting the layers of slip and skirt tumble back down as she switches legs, and he feels his mouth go a little dry. He’s watching her settle into these layers of identity, this costume, effortless like a habit but still focused, still precise, and she’s a beautiful woman but it’s that cold precision and burning focus that he can’t turn away from.

It must be costing her something to unearth it all, but she’s hidden that so well he can barely catch the moments when things slip, when she wavers.

He can only hope to steady her, if she’ll let him. She tosses her hair, the waves falling off her shoulders, and smoothes the dress back down.

“Perfect,” he says, and if his voice is throatier than he’s comfortable with, at least it comes out as more than a croak.

“C’mere,” she says, softly, turning that focus on him. “Let me redo your tie while I brush you up on the etiquette.”

~*~

Jarvis makes the introductions in the nightclub, standing formally, but Ana’s warm smile helps ease the tension. There are several tables close together, buckets of champagne, and bottles of coke and clear white rum.

“Not sure you remember from family picnics back in the day,” Tony says, and Howard cocks his head. 

“You do look familiar,” he says, like he’s puzzling out a memory, and Maria touches his arm, gives Tony her own hand, interrupting Howard as he fumbles around an introduction, landing on, “My friend, Miss Carbonell.”

“Maria,” she says.

“Pleasure,” Tony says, and kisses her hand. Howard flinches a little.

“That charm is certainly familiar,” he says, sounding a little displeased.

“Everyone says the apple didn’t fall far from the tree with me,” Tony says. “Look at photos of my pop, and I’m the spitting image. And he’s the spitting image of your dad.”

But he’s watching Maria when he says this, and she’s studying him with frank curiosity. “You could be brothers,” she says.

“Just distant cousins ma’am, and I appreciate you letting us horn in on your party.”

Bruce can tell that the act is faltering, and honesty he can’t imagine looking at his own mother, standing tall and straight in her youth, and pretending anything at all. He plunges in to steady Tony, reaching to shake Howard Stark’s hand.

“It’s a pleasure, Mr. Stark,” he says, cognizant of the similar hand shape and complementary sets of mechanic scars between father and son, “it truly is. Your work, your _scientific_ work, is extraordinary.”

Howard looks vaguely suspicious, “Not a lot of people paying attention to the science,” he says, “Just the products that come of it.”

Tony’s on firmer ground again, tagging in to quip, “What can I say, he reads _Popular Mechanics_ for the articles.”

No one laughs; the people in that time don’t yet have _Playboy_ , and the people he brought with him don’t think it’s funny. Maria steps in to smooth it over with the gentleness of the truly socially adept, reaching to shake Bruce’s hand, “Well, to make a confession, so do I.”

Tony clears his throat and introduces Natasha as Clara, his lovely assistant, and doesn’t even wince when she grinds a heel into the top of his foot.

“I help Mr. Stark with his business interests,” Natasha says, and her correction seems to pique Peggy’s interest. “While he’s down here to play, I’ll be working.”

Her friend Angie looks at Natasha wide-eyed, and says, “That’s a hell of a dress,” when Natasha removes her light wrapper and gloves, handing them to Bruce, who hands them to the maitre d’ the way he’d been coached.

The dress swishes against his legs as he holds out a chair for her. She rests her fingers on his arm, dips her neck, and remains standing. He's distracted for a moment by the warmth of her fingers, the curve of her bicep. Her focus, as she takes everything in, listening so intently.

More and more every day, he finds himself distracted by her. The way she puzzles out a piece of intel, butters her toast to the very edges, scratches her neck with a pen, curves into a stretch. 

“You like clothes,” Natasha says to Angie, and the other woman grins wolfishly.

“I’m an actress,” Angie says. “I have to keep up.” She invites Natasha to sit with them, leaving Bruce to bracket Tony. 

“Quite a coup,” Natasha says to Howard, “securing tables for this many at Havana’s hottest spot. Thank you so much for including us. Virtual strangers and all, even if some of them are family.”

“Ana vouched for you,” Maria says quickly, but Bruce notes that Peggy Carter is studying them all under hooded eyes, and he guesses that part of the agreed upon invite was contingent upon her curiosity.

“I’d have been happy to go down to the hotel ballroom,” Angie says, “I just wanted to dance.”

“No, no.” Ana pats her hand and doesn’t let go, as if Angie might actually leave. “Perez Prado is amazing - Cuban music, African, jazz, some Stravinsky - it’s delicious goulash for the ears, you will love it.”

“This band is world-famous,” Natasha agrees. “It should be a riot.”

~*~

Maria retouches her lipstick, looks at the other woman in the mirror. Clara already looks perfect, effortlessly so. No stray hairs in that auburn do, or smeared carnelian on her teeth despite the fullness of her lips, no blotchy powder even after dancing a whole set.

Her wide smile has dazzled half of the nightclub. It seems practiced, but Maria remains a tiny bit envious, the way she always has been of her cousin Cecilia who was perfect, but kind anyway.

“Have you known Mr. Stark long?” she asks. Her curiosity about Howard’s cousin is strong, she's eager to talk to someone who might know a bit of what’s buried underneath.

“Long enough,” Clara digs out a few coins for the attendant, but waves off the proffered mints and cigarettes. She picks up one of the bottles of scent to sniff, shakes her head and sets it back down.

“Are you...friends?” Maria would like to be straightforward about her curiosity, wondering if this is another Havana fling, although she’s not sure what the point of knowing would be. Clara doesn’t seem to be the mistress type. But then, six months ago, Maria would have said the same thing about herself.

The question, instead of coming off as offensive, cracks the perfect arch of straight ivory teeth into a broad and almost goofy smile, eyes crinkling at the corners.

“Friends, yes,” Clara emphasizes. “But nothing more. He appreciates my technical expertise with his sales system, and his staff. I was…” she moistens her lips, “active during the war. Good at puzzles, circuits, that sort of thing.”

Maria knows that’s code for code-breaking. “You look young for that kind of work.”

“I’m older than I look.”

Maria nods at that, thinking that maybe the illusion of perfection is simply a matter of practice. The drums start up again, the congos so fast and smooth they sound like lions purring.

~*~

The Tropicana is a deconstructed band shell, an arching ceiling widening out from an intimate stage to a ballroom and bar, punctuated by slashing arcs of windows that showcase the jungle garden and terrace outside. The room is warm, pulsating with the sound of drums and horns and people pressed close. It’s like a top tier marching band sold its soul to the devil in exchange for rum and sex.

Bruce misses sex with the intensity of thirst, a whole body ache radiating outward.

Release he's more than capable of on his own, but touch… The calming routine Natasha has been developing with him relies on a kind of rapport and ritualized contact that at its base means allowing someone else to tweak his nervous system, to touch him with the intent to move him. He wants to place more of himself in her hands.

Their party has torn through the champagne, and half their table is now on the dance floor, including Howard coaxing Natasha with a sly glance toward Tony to gauge his reaction. Tony had been busy ordering cocktails.

Howard is a surprisingly slick dancer, in such a close clinch with Natasha they move like a single predator across the floor. Bruce has known she can make fighting look like art, and now he's fascinated by the way she's making dancing look lethal.

“Stop staring at her, you just _had_ dinner.” Tony waves a fancy glass with an umbrella in Bruce’s eye line.

He’d initially abstained, but he takes the drink. “Why the hell not?” It’s a strange teal color from the stage lighting, or maybe from accent lights out on the terrace. He sips it, and frowns, pushing the glass at Tony. “Melon.”

“Not what I ordered,” Tony pushes it back, “You’ve just got wacky taste buds.”

“No,” Bruce says, “I don’t.”

Tony sips the drink and pulls a face. “Jesus, that tastes like fruity asshole.”

Bruce purses his mouth. “Melon.”

“Weird,” Tony says, “maybe the glass wasn’t rinsed out, something in the soap.”

Natasha’s champagne glass is across the table, half empty. Bruce stands a little to snag it and finish it off, knowing she’ll never return to a drink she’s left standing alone. Maybe he also turns it to taste her lipstick print.

At this point Peggy grabs her glass and clutch and relocates just across from Tony. Bruce is not going to stay for any of that action, so he excuses himself to ask Maria out onto the dance floor.

“Oh, but Hank,” her joshing smile is so familiar it boggles him that no one’s caught on to _that_ resemblance, “I thought you only knew the box step?”

“If you want anything fancier you’ll have to lead.” He shrugs, “I’m game.”

“You certainly know how to sweeten the deal.”

~*~

Peggy fixes Tony with a glance over her drink.

He watches Howard and Natasha move with a jaunty grace around the dance floor. Bruce has his hands primly on Maria’s shoulder and waist, more relaxed than Tony would have expected, and his mother is giving him a smile full of wit and charm.

“I know you’re lying to me,” Peggy says, “Although I haven’t decided if that makes you dangerous, or simply foolish and tiresome.”

“I’m just a guy from Paramus,” he offers his most innocent smile, “trying to do my mother proud.”

Peggy snorts.

Howard maneuvers closer to the other couple, and the swap is so elegant that Tony doesn't notice the hand-off until Maria’s bright laugh peals out. He can’t believe, watching them spin back into the middle of the floor, that these two people will become The Starks. Or they won’t, if the three of them can’t figure out how to make Maria say yes, to look beyond temptation and charm to see a future. All the while, ringing in the back of his head is the idea that if she says no...he won’t exist, but maybe then she also won’t die, too young. In pain.

“Howard’s quite taken with her,” Peggy drops it like intel, but it’s so damnably fond. “She’s far out of his league.” 

He pulls his gaze from Howard and Maria, eyes blurring at the other couples, a sea of color and rolling hips. He’s so tired. “Rumor was he’d never settle down, but he looks…”

“Smitten,” Peggy fills in. “Perhaps. Howard tends to hear the word _no_ like a dare instead of an answer. I suspect that’s a poor strategy with Maria in the long term.”

The band finishes the mambo, and the dancers clap. The singer, perfect dark hair and tropical flower behind her ear, glides manicured fingers along the microphone stand and begins to croon a song that Tony recognizes.

His parents are standing in the middle of the floor, murmuring but not dancing, Maria looking over her shoulder. Howard stares at her profile with such devastating sincerity it’s hard to watch. Tony shifts instead to Bruce and Natasha, expecting to see them making their way back.

Instead, he sees her shifting in Bruce’s arms, adjusting his grip on her waist, her hand gentle on his neck. It’s just a moment, fraught and nearly missed, as they move together effortlessly, lost to everything outside that circle.

“I’m not a threat, to you or to them,” Tony says, so softly he’s not sure Peggy can hear him, or even if he intends her to. “I just wanted some time. Family is everything.”

~*~

A stray lock tumbles down Natasha's neck as Bruce settles her wrap over her shoulders, and he uses the excuse of easing the hair free to run it slowly between his fingers.

It’s been raining again, so they stand under the awning, and he’s close enough to slip a hand around her waist. All these impulses today, arcing through him like lightning, uncontrolled. He’s chatty, tactile, distracted by everything, hovering between giddy and irritable, like time travel comes with weird emotional side effects.

She turns, stepping even closer to pull him into the shadows by his lapel.

The thick humid scent of rain on pavement mingles with the scent of her perfume and heated skin, heady and exhilarating, and she cups his neck, drawing him near. He lets himself bend towards her, looking at her mouth, but she moves to whisper in his ear, “Look,” angling him subtly with a push of her knee.

Peggy had spoken briefly of an engagement, but the vague details hadn’t squared with what they knew of her history. Later on Natasha had met his eyes at Peggy’s murmured, “Darling,” when Angie had brought her a club soda out of the blue, Angie tapping the tip of Peggy's nose with a smirk so knowing it bordered on carnal.

Now there they are, at the edge of the swooping driveway to the club, Peggy’s hand curved around Angie’s jaw, the other woman’s hands on her hips.

“Oh,” Bruce says, then whispering against Natasha’s cheek, “good for them.”

“Everyone’s got secrets,” she agrees, nails stroking his nape. She drops her hand with a pointed tilt of her head, “Tony.” 

He’s looking for them, so they separate and step out of the shadow, and follow him to the waiting taxi.

Natasha reaches for Bruce’s elbow, then puts her hand in her pocket instead. She frowns, pulls out a cocktail napkin.

“What is it?” Bruce asks because her mouth is tensed down, concentrated in a way she only gets when she’s working a puzzle instead of an angle.

“I’m not sure,” she says, then smooths her features.

Here's another indulgence: he allows himself to resent that camouflage, just a little, because she doesn’t do that with him very often anymore. She’s been very deliberate about letting things show, still controlled and still schooled, her own time and tempo, her own awkward box step, but he can tell that she’s working on this. That she’s making a choice to show him part of who she is. On days where control seems impossible and running the only answer, he thinks of those small, tender expressions of genuine emotion, and he tries that much harder to stay present. To simply stay.

But it’s been a big day, and he figures old habits, perhaps. She tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow, deliberately this time, warm through his jacket.

“When we get back,” she murmurs, “we should review the day, check in with the Big Guy. The repetition is important, even in the midst of this insanity. The more we vary the environment, the better, actually.”

He nods, tamping down irrational disappointment.

~*~

It’s the ubiquitous smoking that grates on Tony, and when they get back to the hotel he lingers out in the patio garden just to air out his clothes. Maybe clear his mind a little. There’s ambient noise from traffic; even during the rainy season there will be shows until four in the morning.

He strolls toward the pool, thinking he’d like to dip his feet in to soothe the pinch from the stiff new leather of his shoes, which are already in his hand.

There’s no lock, just a latch for the gate. Tony’s rolling up his pant legs when he hears that he’s not alone, a quiet shuffling and panting noise coming from the row of three cabanas to the side of the pool. He slides his feet into the cool water and sighs, resigned to sharing this meditative moment with whomever is so desperate to fuck they can’t make it back into the hotel not thirty feet away.

Could be someone having a very prolonged seizure. Steve Rogers would get off his ass and go check on them, probably shove his wallet between their teeth because that was the done thing when he was a lad.

Steve would be far more at home here, and not just because this would be a Howard he’d recognize.

If Tony did get off his ass it would be to shake their hands; that is some stamina for what sounds like a steady fuck against a rickety cabana wall. That kind of thing takes solid teamwork.

He pulls out his wallet and flips to the photo of Pepper.

It's from the morning he left, translated from her most recent contact picture on his phone. He updates it every few days, the series of them backed up on his personal servers, so many expressions, so many ways the light hits her. She was dressing for work, cream silk blouse but her jacket still on the hanger, tilting her head to put an earring in. It was early yet, and he lounged naked on the bed, air drying from the shower.

She was taking a parting look and also taking a parting shot, and he'd caught her wicked smirk with the dawn light a nimbus through her strawberry blonde hair. He'd even changed her contact name to Our Lady of Perpetual Concupiscence.

Tony slips the wallet into the inside pocket of his jacket, over his scarred heart, and talks to Pepper a little in his head.

~*~

Bruce has taken off his shoes, balling his socks up and stuffing them under the tongue of the oxfords. It’s something he does whenever he feels like he’s done for the day. She’s not even sure he’s conscious of it, the way he signals to himself that it’s time to relax.

At home this is when they practice the breathing, the hypnotic suggestion, the pulse points and ritualized contact. Afterward, she follows him into the kitchen in his suite where he brews a spicy sweet Darjeeling for them both. Not every night, not always at night...and recently he’s taken a moment or two to rouse the Other Guy before they begin, another presence under the surface, a kind of training for her as well.

He’s on edge, and has been since they arrived. She thinks it’s going to be one of those nights where his eyes burn bright green into hers while she pitches her voice to soothe, coaxing him to blink, to breathe, to come back from the brink. He always takes off his shoes, and the bones of his pale feet are something she pictures when she thinks of him at ease.

Now he sits cross-legged on the settee in her hotel room, and at her nod his focus turns inward and hardens.

She forces down the urge to cup his ankle, run a thumb over the delicate arch, push into the ball. Those bare feet seem so vulnerable to her, at times it hurts to look at him. She wonders if they’ll look as vulnerable when he’s at size and unearthly green. Perhaps so. The hypnotic suggestion goes both ways, after all, two nervous systems agreeing that the threat has passed, echoing reassurance in a feedback loop.

His brow furrows but the careful set of his mouth remains Bruce; this is frustration, not the Other Guy. Long minutes pass as his breathing ramps up fast and sharp, and she hears his teeth squeak from grinding. When he opens his eyes, shaking his head, they do not glow in the shadow of the lamplight.

“No…”

“Bruce?”

“No, this isn’t…”

“What’s going on? Talk to me--”

“Shut up,” He jumps up from the settee, pacing the room with a hand clenched in his hair, the other opening and closing in a white-knuckled fist, “No, just--I need to _think_.”

She gives him silence, but he just paces harder. She eases her feet onto the floor.

He halts by the door to the en suite bathroom, balls up his fist and slams it into the wall.

“ _Bruce._ ”

He swings back, curling his shoulder into it, and punches again harder. The thump is surprisingly quiet, stucco over brick unimpressed by mere human meat, no matter how angry.

When he cocks back a third time Natasha catches his wrist with a twist, pushing at the shoulder to lever him off-balance. His bitten-off profanity turns into a long wordless shout as she bends him at the waist with his arm pinned back, her forearm along his upper spine.

He pulls in another breath and growls, warning, “ _Natasha_.”

“Hushhh, easy,” she uses the tone they’ve been practicing, and maybe they haven’t tried this variation,putting him in a restriction hold as she croons in his ear, but his knuckles are raw, “easy, it’s okay.”

“No, he’s…” there’s an edge of panic to his voice, “Natasha, I'm…”

“Okay, we'll figure it out.” She leans her weight on him, not to force him down, but enough to ground him. He shudders, and eases onto his knees.

“That's it,” she murmurs, loosening her grip on his wrist and giving that forearm a slow stroke.

He exhales, “It’s gone.” 

He’s kneeling pliant on the carpet now, so she gives him that arm. She stays curled over his back, tucking her cheek against his sweaty neck, breathing against him deliberately slow. “Are you saying the Hulk is _gone_?”

He swears a low litany and then gulps in a breath. “The _separation_ is gone.”

She takes her weight off of him, takes a step back.

He collapses to the side to sit, leaning back on one arm, his bloody hand propped on his thigh. 

Natasha thinks the skin is probably just scraped and not split. She joins him on the floor, phrasing it carefully, “I want you to tell me, Bruce.”

He nods, wiping at his eyes with the heel of his palm, a tremor noticeable. “It’s...like when you run a fever, your skin feels strange...porous, too tight. But the presence in my head...I thought he was just being quiet, the weirdness of the day, sometimes he’s dormant for a while if it’s safe or it’s a problem he needs me to solve.”

“But when you went looking just now…”

“He’s...everywhere, and nowhere. I can’t feel him.”

The lamp light hits his face directly now, unhampered by the shade from this angle. She moves in close, taking his chin in her fingers. He leans into her touch.

“It’s like before the accident, except he left me with the rage and nothing to carry it in.”

The liquid brown of his eyes has faded, revealing flecks of olive and brass.

“Oh,” she runs her thumb along his cheekbone, “you’re not gonna like my theory.”

~*~

Tony arrives in silk pyjamas and a smoking jacket. Bruce wants to think he looks ridiculous in the reddish gold brocade, and it annoys him that Tony is in fact pulling it off.

“What are you saying, Romanoff? That the Hulk’s still in there?” He leans a hand on the bed to peer into Bruce’s eyes. “That he’s been homogenized like milk?”

“He’s _always_ been in there, Tony, that’s my point.” Natasha is pacing now, which is novel but strangely not worrisome to Bruce. “I don’t know if it’s the time shift, or translation--”

“Asgardian freebie.” Bruce pulls his hand from the ice bucket and flexes it. This only breaks open the cuts on his knuckles, but he can’t help but poke at the discomfort. Tony gives him the same pained look from lunch. Bruce shoves his hand into the ice and leans back against the headboard.

“How do you feel?”

Bruce answers as truthfully as he can, having thought about it more coherently since he lost his shit earlier. “Like I’ve got a sunburn on my soul.”

“That’s poetic for you.”

“No, really. Like when you can’t wear shirts, or sleep worth a damn, and your head pounds, and everything itches. But you know the second you scratch, it’ll feel amazing and then there’ll be hell to pay.”

Natasha crosses her arms and nods like a gesture as Tony passes her, a nonverbal _You see? I’m right_.

Bruce notices her bustline is pointy, and has a flash of very unseemly thoughts about fifties underwear that he punches down, stirring his hand around in the ice so the cubes batter his knuckles.

“This is simply the best vacation ever.” Tony sprawls on the settee in a peevish swoon. “You’re having a Spymaster’s Homecoming Week, I’m the third wheel in my parents’ sex farce--”

“Schrodinger's ass.”

Natasha fails to control a little snort, but Tony just looks at him with a fed up expression. “Say what you will about his impact on real estate values, but on his own he comes across as less of a dick.”

Bruce shrugs. “I can’t disagree.”

Once the ice melts Natasha boots them through the connecting door to their own room, to flip a coin for the double bed versus settee while she sprawls in the middle of that luxurious king size mattress all alone.

Bruce struggles to find a place for his feet, struggles even more with his equilibrium as Tony punches his pillows, sighing in annoyance. Neither of them are squeamish about sharing, but a double isn’t enough space for two sets of restless habits.

Another round of tossing and sighing drives Bruce to snipe, “What now?”

“There has to be a way to know,” Tony says, “if we’ve time-hopped or universe hopped, if our presence is shifting things, if just being here fucks it all up or makes it better.”

Bruce gives a noncommittal noise. The mechanisms and implications of time travel is one of the topics he ponders when he’s trying to unwind his brain enough to sleep, but that certainly isn’t going to work in this situation.

“Tell me that doesn't worry you. Aside from the obvious.”

“Yeah, of course it does.” He rubs his eye compulsively until the pressure on his retina makes him see honeycomb patterns. “But I'm not sure there's a way to prevent that, or do anything really but fly blind. We’re here at the whim of a being wielding technology advanced enough to look like magic, whose cosmology is expressed in the metaphor of a multidimensional gallows tree--”

“So you’re thinking multiverse?”

“I’m thinking Natasha’s the best qualified to figure out the endgame on this, frankly.”

“Meaning we drink and dance and play spies, so our Queen can move freely about the board.”

“Yeah, pretty much.” Bruce lays his leg against the wall, the cool plaster a heat sink. “Your parents are a cute couple though, even with your dad half a wreck.”

“He looks so young,” Tony says. “But much older than the photos, the ones from Los Alamos, not that long ago.”

“He'd created two of the greatest weapons imaginable at this point, two devastating answers to war,” Bruce says. “He's allowed to age.”

What he doesn't say is that more than anything, his thoughts are straying to this impossible chance to finally ask Howard about another legacy, to figure out how Bruce’s own efforts at the serum had gone so very wrong.


	3. CH3 - Inconsistent Histories - Monday, Sept. 1, 1952

### CH3 - Inconsistent Histories - Monday, Sept. 1, 1952

Tony sips coffee, and waffles around putting the pressed powder compact back together. Natasha is picking the melon out of her fruit salad and putting it onto Bruce’s plate. He scowls, but eats the pieces anyway.

Stark holds up the tiny microchip with the tweezers from the compact, rotating it side to side. “You really pulled this off a bottle of cheap cologne in the women’s room?”

She hums, eats a chunk of mango. “The only contact anywhere close to the description I had in my suitcase was the attendant. With the embassy closed, exchanges happen in the shadows; sometimes that means the powder room.”

Tony shakes his head, “That’s very Agent 99, but it seems like a lot of work to share a contact and locale, and even that was in code.”

She offers him a mirthless grin, “Clearly you’ve never spent time with the Soviets. Americans did not have a monopoly on overly complicated. For all their emotional reserve, the Brits were far more straightforward.”

Bruce takes the compact out of Tony’s hands, grips the reflective lens, flips it over, slips the wafer thin magnifier on top, and then takes the tweezers and slips the chip into place. He snaps it closed and the string of numbers appears on the underside. “You weren’t even trying to work it properly.”

“I really just wanted to see how the powder stays out of the cracks,” Tony confesses. “That’s the real engineering feat here.”

Natasha takes the compact, and Bruce slides the remaining papaya off of her plate in exchange for his toasted bread.

“Do you actually have a plan for your excursion with Maria?” she asks Tony. “And consider it an unsanctioned excursion, because I’m on the record that this is a terrible idea.”

“I’ll improvise,” he assures her, pointing a thumb at their problem child, “enjoy Hank.”

~*~

The market is bustling in the late morning, vendors trying to offload their wares and go home, calling out to tourists and shouting over each other.

Maria has turned down Eddie's offer to take her basket, because she wants to see what he does with his hands. “Surely you have better things to do than look at fruit and flowers,” she prods.

“Not really,” he says, “This is a working vacation. Taxes look better if you talk shop while enjoying the sun and sand.”

He says it with a self-deprecating lift of his shoulders, hands in his pockets, and she takes it for what it’s worth.

Eddie had been brash and loud initially, but once he settled down and dropped the car spiel, he’d turned out to be surprisingly gentle, witty and sharp. He’d volunteered to accompany her to the market, and she’d agreed in part to poke at Howard, an unkind impulse she isn’t proud of, but also for the chance to gain insight into the Stark family, even through a more distant branch.

She may be just as chagrined by that second impulse. Distaff cousin or no, he reminds her of Howard, and there’s a rush of fondness at that resemblance that she’s decided to put away for later.

One of the stalls has bright flowers, a blushing fuchsia frilled along the edges like lace. Eddie hands over the money and puts the flowers in Maria’s basket.

“I love this color,” she says, “so vibrant.”

Eddie rubs his hand over his chin with its complicated devilish goatee, and smiles. “So did my mom. She’d have flowers all over the house, different colors, but on our dining room table, always something bright and wild.”

“That sounds nice.” It occurs to her that if she stops thwarting Howard’s attempts to talk marriage, she could have a house full of flowers. It’s a frivolous thought, but appealing regardless. She still can’t help but follow the thought to it’s conclusion, how her whole life would change. It would be a job to be the wife of Howard Stark exactly because of the money and connections. Social obligations that a bachelor could leave fallow would change overnight once there was a wife expected to handle them.

That was daunting enough, but Maria’s biggest concern is Howard himself.

He might find it a lark to play at being in love, courting a hard-to-get brainiac into bed and whisking her off to Havana, but could she really believe this fling would hold his interest for any length of time? There was always another girl, someone taller and prettier and more (or less) of a challenge, more fun. Would she be happy with what would ultimately just be a career change from Associate Mathematician to what, socialite? Marriage was sacred.

Eddie breaks into her reverie. “You said last night that you missed your work.”

She shakes her head, “I miss the work, a little. I write compiling language for computers. I know that sounds--”

“No,” Eddie says, turning toward her with that Stark energy like a fighting terrier dog, “I know how important...well, I've done some of that myself, in wartime. Engineering, computing. Circuit building.”

Where did he serve in the war secure enough to house electronic computers but no women around to do the grunt work cheaper? Maybe this was after he was wounded. It’s likely where he met Clara. Maria lifts her brow, and he gets a little flustered, shoulders twitching in a shrug.

“I'm good at math. Mechanics. I enjoy it.”

“You own the dealership but you'd rather be in the garage?”

“Every chance I get,” he grins, and there's something terribly familiar about the way he swivels on the ball of one foot to nudge his shoulder against hers. “I’d love to hear what you’re working on, what isn’t proprietary at least.”

“That’s unusual for…” she doesn’t say _a man_ , but she thinks it. Of course Howard has surrounded himself with unusually bright women and men, perhaps it runs in the family. “People,” she finishes instead. “It’s rare that people enjoy hearing the technical details of a new field they don’t understand.”

“I may not understand yet,” instead of boastful he looks almost hungry when he says softly, “but try me. I think you’ll find I can keep up.”

~*~

The park is a formal garden with a small fountain, adjacent to a stretch of beach with vendors selling street food. Bruce parks himself on the stone border of a flower bed to eat an empanada while Natasha strolls the paths with her camera.

She’s here to meet with a contact. Bruce is here so she doesn’t get saddled with a replacement partner. She’d explained Boris’s role as a combination of assistant and passport; he was an extra pair of hands, a distraction, a feint, and having him in tow made her invisible in places intolerant of unattended women.

She stops to photograph an older woman with a flower crown and a cigar both phallic and intimidating. The woman grins at Natasha, and accepts the coin she offers.

She lowers the camera strap, and adjusts her sunglasses. Tony had rigged up two limited distance comms from electronics he'd bought downtown and scavenged from her equipment case. Bruce's earpiece is a clunky hearing aid wired to a recorder in his pocket. Her comm hides in the temple of her sunglasses, conducting sound through the bone behind her ear.

Bruce taps down his frames, even heavier with the dark aviator clip-ons to make them into sunglasses, and squints a smile up at her as he hands over the lemonade.

“Should have brought your snazzy hat,” Natasha says with a smirk. For once, the day is unseemly in its glory. 

He pushes the sunglasses back up. It's not worth mentioning that he'd spent a good fifteen minutes determining which combination would cut the most glare and be the least annoying on his head along with the comm. The grating reactivity is worse today, now that he has a working hypothesis, and the urge to scratch the itch of the rage prickles at him in the absence of catastrophic consequences.

“You know, you’re going to get grease on those slacks.” She doesn't say it like a jab, more like she's trying to manage expectations, buffer his irritation.

“Not a chance.” He wants to reassure her that he's got a grip, offering a smile, “I’m the master of cool here.”

Her chuckle is low, the easy sensuality of it a little taunting. She sips his lemonade, the red bow of her mouth a bright lure. Just the sight of it fires extra circuits in his brain, and his lips tingle with how the wax of her lipstick would melt between their mouths, smearing, how the sweet tartness would flood over his tongue, how delicious she would be.

“Cool points rapidly dissolving,” she observes with a pointed look at the drip of grease on his shirt.

“Dammit.”

She takes a handkerchief from her pocketbook and dips a corner in the fountain, then slips her fingers between his buttons. Her knuckles brush against his stomach as she dabs, and he can smell the faint soap and clean salt scent of her skin, the gingery gardenia scent of her hair.

She catches his eyes, and he lets her see that he’s dazzled, heated. Stupid with her, and with this. She pauses, pressing against his skin, and he sucks in his breath, bites his lip. Such a small thing, but the churn of uncertainty keeps him in check even as he craves more.

The craving is the revelation here. With whatever is happening, wherever the avatar of his rage has gone off to, he's been left with this dickish angry frustration, this screeching over-sensitivity, but also... _want_. Untamped. Untamed. Not simply sexual desire, but...longing...for touch, connection, warmth. Impossible to ignore.

It’s amazing and terrifying.

She’s so close to him, pupils darkening, licking that bottom lip so lush and perfect. Her fingers inside his shirt fan out, grazing through the hair on his belly, nails nipping into the tender skin as she leans in. He’s barely breathing, and then he’s actually hitching a bit as the camera digs into his diaphragm.

She swears and steps back. 

Loathing and frustration flood back into that gap, cold and vicious.

“It’s...better,” she passes him the handkerchief, raising the camera as she steps further away. The lens points at Bruce, but her eyes track a woman on the other side of the fountain.

He takes a deep breath, reaching into his pocket to turn on the recording device.

“They’ll need to see you,” she says without moving her lips, and he hums acknowledgement as he gives her some distance, “a glance will do.”

Her contact is between thirty and fifty, it’s remarkably hard to tell with her colorless hair pulled back, wearing a navy wool suit that Bruce thinks is period appropriate but wildly unforgiving for the late summer heat. She doesn’t look like she sweats. Maybe she stores all that heat, like a lizard on a hot rock, to get through winter.

“Such liberties taken,” she eyes Natasha’s bright butterfly printed dress, bare legs and sunhat with a delicate sneer, “on assignment away from the Motherland.”

“Fitting in,” Natasha replies sweetly, “is an art not everyone can master.”

Bruce murmurs, “She reminds me of one of the lunch ladies in grade school.”

Natasha’s lips twist at that, and she gracefully scratches her neck, giving him the middle finger at the same time.

“I’m here to do my part,” the contact says primly. “And I’ve mastered other arts.”

“I’m here to do my part as well,” Natasha says, “As requested.” She emphasizes that last word, and Bruce shivers a little. Decades of banked resentment and cold fury.

“As ordered,” the woman corrects.

“Six of one, half dozen of the other,” Natasha spins out the idiom as she flicks her hair back off her shoulder, flaunting the more socially acceptable of the arts she worked hard to master. “But we both know my presence is intentional. They do not _order_ me to places where _anyone_ would do.”

“Really,” he says softly, “my experience with taunting Nurse Ratched types has always been bad.”

“Your partner,” the woman bites out. Natasha tilts her sunglasses down her nose, the signal they’d agreed on, and Bruce steps out from behind the tree. He resists offering a jaunty wave by trying to imagine life as a morose Soviet assassin. It’s not that hard. Natasha pushes her sunglasses back up and he strolls back across the park.

The sky is starting to darken, clouds rolling in out of nowhere, and the conversation in his ear has shifted to snippy sounding Russian.

A few minutes later, Natasha walks over to where he lingers by the trees, her contact nowhere in sight. She's tucked her straw shoulder bag close to her body, and she hooks his elbow for good measure. He lets her gather him, grazing his fingers over the back of her hand.

She glances up at the impending storm. “Nurse Ratched?”

“Am I wrong?” he asks.

“More Mrs. Danvers,” she says, “But you know the type. Every government office from the beginning of time has one.” She smirks up at him, gloriously devious, and then the sky opens up.

The rain is shockingly cold after such heat; she gasps and they run for a taxi hand in hand.

~*~

Howard catches Clara by the arm as she nearly careens into him, her vision limited by the bag she’s holding over her head to block the rain. To no avail, she's soaked just like Hank, who's waving off the concierge's umbrella as he strolls in.

“Shall we dance?” Howard teases her, the charm habitual. On the dance floor she moved like the music lived in her, clever and bright as her conversation, but he's all talk.

That night Maria’s placid gaze had been more than enough to rein him in, not simply her watchfulness - nothing much got by her - but a genuine desire not to give her any reason to doubt his devotion. He's surprised to feel the same way on his own recognizance. Howard is unused to letting anyone’s opinion of him alter what he does or doesn’t do, but the thought of causing Maria discomfort, let alone pain, leaves a hollow trail all the way through him. Peggy would accuse him of developing a conscience to accompany his broken heart.

“Howard,” Clara gently removes herself from his grip, hand coming up to cradle the fancy camera dangling from her neck. She flashes a flirtatious wink. “How nice to run into you.”

Hank comes up, shaking water out of his hair. “I thought you planned to golf this morning.”

“Got a couple friends in the Early Warning squadron out of Jacksonville, gave me a hot tip about this system coming in,” Howard replies, shaking hands and indicating the rain whipping outside. “I didn’t believe it, but here we are. If I’d played, I’d be drowning at the 9th hole right now.”

“Trust a pilot to keep a weather eye out,” Clara teases.

“We were playing tourist," Hank takes a handkerchief from his pocket, likely to dry his glasses, but Clara steals it, “walking through the park.”

“I’m a bit of an amateur photographer.” She wipes the speckles of rain from the camera, while Hank ruefully pulls a shirt tail free for his own lenses. “I did some photojournalism during the war and after. Now I photograph the vehicles for sale at the dealership. We did a calendar last year.”

The camera is a Leica with the factory upgrades. It’s in good shape, and she handles it with ease. “How’d you feel about taking some photos for me later tonight?”

She tilts her head at Hank like she’s asking for his opinion, but Howard knows women, and this one speaks her own mind. Hank conveys a shrug with a flicker of eyebrows, then runs a hand through his wet curly hair with a grimace.

“We don’t have hard and fast plans,” Clara says finally. “Tell me when and where.”

Hank brushes her arm, fingers trailing over her elbow. “I’m going to go order tea sent up to the room.”

Her face goes soft for a moment as she nods to Hank, then turns back to Howard.

He feels his jaw relax, that sharp unsettled feeling starting to ease. He’d wondered, before, if he should be worried about these three - his erstwhile relative and the entourage - but he suspects they’re just tourists, down in Cuba sowing some oats. “My man Jarvis...well, he usually takes photos of the places we go. But I insist this is a real vacation for them both, and I thought it’d be nice to have some photos made for them. To remember it by. For Peggy as well.”

Clara’s gaze is shrewd; she understands the impulse to make a memento. “I’d be happy to, truly.”

“Come by our suite,” he says, “At seven, cocktail hour before dinner.”

“We’ll be there,” she says, shifting the mood back with a smile, “We should be dry by then.”

Howard grins back, arching an eyebrow, “Not after my cocktails.”

~*~

Natasha adjusts the straps of the white halter swimsuit, cheerful red piping edging around it like the electricity highlights her tac suit. The squall has passed over, though water still runs off the eaves and drips from the trees. She’s closed her louvered shutters against the sharp sun and the haze of humidity.

Bruce knocks on the connecting door and she calls him in. He’s wrapped in a fluffy white robe, hair curling wildly from the rain and half-dissolved Vitalis.

They’ve agreed to meet Tony by the pool in the afternoon, working their cover of enjoying the fruits of their labor while fitting in enough business meetings to justify the tax write-off.

“I’m nearly ready,” she says. He makes a noncommittal noise, and she can see in the mirror that his eyes flick between the settee and the bed. Defying her expectations, he sits down on the edge of the mattress, then collapses back with a little moan.

She pulls her hair up in a twist, watching him over her shoulder.

“Tony snores like a stevedore,” he mumbles, half explanation, half excuse.

Her mouth quirks up in a grin. “Slept with a lot of stevedores, have you?” 

“Ha. Yes, actually, I've dormed with laborers.” He buries his head into her pillow. “I think he must have a sinus condition.”

“Or took an unlucky punch to the face.”

“All punches to the face are unlucky.”

“Not if you're the one punching.”

He says, softer, “I like your suit.”

She puts her hand on her hip, tilts into a brief pinup pose, then snags her wrap.

“Did the papers get ruined,” he asks, voice slurry with exhaustion, “the magazine?” 

She turns, confirming his eyes are drifting shut. 

“No, it’s fine,” she says, and moves towards the bed, “I’m going to work on the code down by the pool. It will just look like a puzzle.”

Bruce’s mouth tilts up, barely a hint of his usual sardonic grin, and something catches at her, that feeling of ease, perhaps. 

“Sorry,” he murmurs, “So tired. ‘S harder today, the disconnect...reconnect, I guess.” His brow is smoother than she's seen outside of unconsciousness, even as he keeps muttering, “More comfortable than the couch. Maybe I live here now.”

She gives in to the temptation and leans onto the bed, shaking him gently so that he rolls towards her, blinking his eyes open. His irises are still flecked with green. His mobile mouth, often set so deeply in concentration, curves at the corners as he looks at her. He reaches for the tie to her wrap, hooking his fingers as she pushes back the riot of curls on his forehead. His skin is warm, hair soft. She is desperately tempted to linger, to push further into his space, to see what he’d do if she crawled in next to him, getting as close as she dares.

It’s a momentary desire, fluttering in her belly. She knows this is a type of madness, ephemeral and dizzying, born of this odd state they find themselves in. Bruce is more tactile, mercurial, clearly unsettled, but also...open somehow, and it’s making her head spin a little, how the slip of his control is nudging at her own.

But it’s the circles under his eyes that move her finally, and she leans forward, whispering, “Sleep,” into Bruce’s ear. His fingers tense over the knot of the robe, and he holds her in place. She holds her breath. It would be so easy to lean in further, balancing her weight over him, slipping into his arms. She waits, tensed against the impulse, even as his eyes flutter shut and his hand goes slack. 

Oh.

Well, fuck. 

She chokes back a laugh, and hangs down her head. She’d just given him a hypnotic suggestion, and like all effective hypnosis, he’d decided to trust her enough to take it. So she unhooks his fingers, taking his hand in hers. The bruises are still prominent, the broken skin scabbing over. She brushes her thumb gently over the damage, and then lays his hand down, and leaves him there.

Tries hard not to dwell on how he looks, asleep in her bed.

~*~

“Among other things I’ve seen so far--one of which I’m desperately trying to scrub from my brain,” Tony flops down in the lounge chair next to Natasha, “I took a peek at your suitcase.”

“Hmm.” She doesn’t ask him what else he’d seen; he’d share if it were relevant, and she’s not interested in feeding his need for attention otherwise.

His swim trunks are patterned with hideous flowers, half obscured by the navy robe. Some things remain the same, even stuck in someone’s past. “How did you get all of that in there?”

“Trade secrets.” She pulls out a magazine of cheap pulp paper, _Picturegoer_ , Stanley Kowalski brooding on the cover in a too-small t-shirt. She opens it across her knees, fits a thin onionskin stencil over the text of the main article, _‘Two Views on Brando’_ , and begins teasing out the lines of the cypher. It’s warm by the pool, driving away the chill from the downpour, but she still keeps the matching wrap around her arms.

Tony looks wilted, and not simply from the rain.

“Where’s Bruce?”

“Napping.” 

“He wasn’t in the room.” Stark sounds particularly petulant.

She blinks once.

“You gonna elaborate on this...whatever it is?”

“No.” She wouldn’t, even if she knew. 

Stark stretches back in the deck chair, ankles crossed. His foot bobs in a way that makes the chair squeak.

Natasha looks up from her magazine. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t you think enough of my id is already on display?”

“Arguably I met your id before I met you, but whatever.” She shrugs. She’s not a counselor.

“Did you know that Ana Jarvis is barely in her fifties when she dies of cancer? That Edwin Jarvis was sometimes the only adult I saw for days at a time? They never had kids, I don’t know why. But they were always...there. Taking care of each other. And me.”

Natasha closes _Picturegoer_. She has a few hours before the next rendezvous in town.

“Different than your parents,” she says, thinking of the tender sweetness of the Jarvises, compared to the hotter chemistry of the would-be Starks. Slow burn, steady. “More openly affectionate.”

“It’s like visiting the grandmother who doesn’t know your name anymore, but who's being hospitable to strangers,” he says. Then, “I fucking hate this.”

She sits up to lay a hand on his forearm. “I’m sorry, Tony.”

He shrugs off the moment of connection, pouncing on the interruption of Bruce coming through the pool gate in black swim trunks and short robe, sunglasses shining, that morning's _Diario de la Marina_ tucked under his arm.

“The body hair is weirdly era-appropriate,” Tony calls over, friendly harassment poking holes in his moroseness. “Like a B-list movie star.”

Bruce scowls at Tony and tosses the newspaper on an empty lounge. Natasha looks him up and down, showy and assessing, and his expression turns sly. He does a catwalk strut and turn, pausing by the pool edge to thrust out a hip and stare intensely at the horizon.

She grins, and he yanks open the tie of the robe, sweeping it back with his fists on his hips, pulling a real laugh out of her.

Tony gives a slow clap, only stopping when Bruce rolls up the paper and swats him.

“Bad dog,” he says, “no biscuit.”

~*~

The cypher gives them another radio frequency, and a key code for future missives. Natasha takes notes, and comes up with another address close to the National Cathedral.

“This is kind of the worst scavenger hunt ever,” Tony says.

“You don’t have to come,” she counters, checking on the microfilm camera tucked into a tiny slit in her gloves.

“It’s that or wondering what line my dad is using to convince my mom to bone. Or thinking about the future she gave up to be with him. Frankly, I can use the distraction.”

“Mrs. Danvers was just doing recon this morning, confirming my identity. I’m hoping now we’ll get more of a sense of what I’m here to do. It’s still likely to be dull for you.”

“I notice no one’s worried about it being dull for me,” Bruce can’t even keep the dry mirth out of his tone, much less off his face.

“Not so much, Boris,” Tony says. “Not so much.”

~*~

They never make it to the next rendezvous.

One moment Natasha is shifting her bag on her shoulder, bickering mildly with Tony about going to the casino that night, the next there’s a pop and a ping and her head whips around to triangulate.

“Get down!” She folds into a crouch behind the engine block of a parked car. Tony drops flat next to her.

Bruce pulls in a breath through the pitch and roll of adrenaline surging in his gut.

The whole block has emptied, which is a blessing at least. He looks to Natasha for any of the signals they’ve been practicing to help him fight the transformation, but she's peering around for the sniper. Instead Tony stares with wide eyes up at Bruce and keeps smacking her in the arm.

Bruce still stands, feet planted, fists so tight his knuckles crack. Tony bellows his name.

Natasha’s head swivels toward him.

Another shot pops, the slug ringing off the car and leaving a divot of bare metal in the middle of the baby blue hood. They need to knock it off with the shooting, he's balanced on the verge.

Natasha barrels into his knees, slamming him into the concrete hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs.

He remembers, finally, that he’s not going to change. The rage swamps him anyway.

It's as big and awful as before, but now it’s also terrifying, because he’s not gonna break this lovely city or its people, but that's because he's vulnerable. Flesh. Unable to protect himself - much worse, he’s unable to be a shield, take the hits and repay them a thousandfold, make it _right_. Make them _stop_.

He doesn't realize he's trying to stand until Natasha shoves him down again hard, rolling on top of him and hissing loudly in his ear, “Goddammit, stay down,” before she slips under the car to come up on the other side brandishing the 1911 from her handbag.

There’s another pop and a thud, and then all the glass from the car they’re hiding behind explodes outward as a body crashes down on the roof.

“Run,” Natasha shouts to Tony across the twitching body as she sprints down the block, “and keep Banner in check!”

Bruce punches Tony’s hands away and takes off after Natasha.

~*~

“Shit shit shit,” Tony repeats like a mantra as he disarms the guy who caved in the car's roof. The fall did a number on his skull, but it was the bullets through the chest and throat that did him in. He pulls a revolver from the holster under his splayed open jacket, swings Natasha's bag onto his shoulder and runs after them both.

Natasha is a flash of auburn hair in the distance, so Tony keeps a bead on Bruce’s pale blue shirt instead, following them around the back of the block. It’s a blind alley, wide enough for delivery access for the businesses, some parked cars, but no traffic.

There are more men waiting, ready to flank them once they’re in the alley.

Natasha punches the closest guy in the dick straightaway, and before his knees even hit the ground she's pistol whipped a second, and done something with the third guy's arm where she sends him head first at speed into the side of the building.

By then Tony has fired at a fourth guy, possibly winged him. The revolver is a piece of shit, the blowback bad enough he doesn't want to pull the trigger again and risk a misfire--what asshole doesn't clean his guns?--so he flips it in his hand and uses it as a bludgeon on the first guy, who's making the bad decision of getting back up.

At this point Tony sees a fifth guy crumple to the ground when Bruce loosens his arm from around his neck, joining a sixth who's laying there with quite a lot of blood coming out of his face. Bruce's ribs are working like a bellows, and he staggers back until he's pressed against the wall.

Natasha goes to Bruce first and loots his pants pocket for a handkerchief, then stalks over to Tony. She shoves her gun back into her bag, plucks the revolver from his hand and buffs it clean, tossing it out of reach of their assailants, should any of them be able to move anytime soon.

Natasha pulls Bruce and they're cutting through alleys and hustling back toward downtown, Tony bringing up the rear, nearly walking backward to watch their flank.

She stops them just short of the street and turns to Tony, “Stay here, and try to wipe that murderous look off your face. I need to hail a taxi, not scare them all off.”

“How are you worried about me and not Melonballs?” Then Tony clocks the disorientation on Bruce’s face, like when they haul him out of rubble and need to hustle him home.

~*~

Tony grabs Bruce’s elbow and hauls him close to speak in a low voice, talking him down or maybe just cajoling him. “Hey, stick with us here, it's gonna be fine, we're heading back to the hotel, we'll regroup, figure this out, maybe have a swim…”

Bruce reaches for his glasses, which have fallen down his nose, carefully adjusting and blinking the blur from his eyes, tears or sweat, or maybe a symptom of dissociation. There's another layer of bruising coming up on his knuckles, maroon over the dusky purple from punching the wall the night before.

“I take it back.” Tony chafes him between the shoulder blades and pats him a couple times. “Melonballs isn't your band, it's your Mexican wrestler name.”

“You’re thinking of luchadores,” he corrects automatically, taking his glasses off and reaching into his pocket. Natasha still has his handkerchief, and come to think of it he doesn’t want to grind gunpowder residue into the heavy glass lenses anyway. He pulls out his shirt tail once more to clean them. “I prefer BWF, actually.”

Tony steers him across the sidewalk and into the back of a taxi where Natasha’s negotiating with the driver in crisp Español.

“BWF?” Tony peers out the windows as they ease out into traffic but everything is normal on this street.

“Brazilian Wrestling Federation.”

Natasha flops back against the seat and looks them both over, snagging her purse from Tony’s shoulder and rummaging for weapons. “What's this, now?”

“Bruce is a pro wrestling fan.” Tony’s collapsed against the door of the taxi, rubbing his chest with his eyes closed. “You know, sniper aside, this is the most surprising development of the day.”

She gives Bruce a shrewd look like he's been holding out on her. “Your fighting style makes so much more sense now.”

“Just sub in parked cars for folding chairs,” Tony adds.

“A lot of folks at the bottling plant were into it,” Bruce notices the bloody scratches on Natasha’s arm. He catches her wrist with one hand and snaps his fingers with the other.

She pulls his handkerchief from a hidden pocket in her skirts and offers it with a smirk. “So you only watched to have water cooler conversation?”

“It’s called blending in,” he says, “but turns out I also like it.”

Natasha watches him bind the scratches with the clean side against her skin, asking, “Why, do you think?”

“Beats telenovelas.” Bruce likes the theater of it, the acrobatics and choreography, the costumes and the melodrama. His father would have derided it as fake and low class, as if that wasn't the whole point in the first place. She’s waiting for more of an explanation, and he thinks maybe she’ll understand. He ties off the hankie with a neat knot. “Real violence is meaningless and ugly. Wrestling is fantastic.”

Her expression has gone soft, eyes glittering. “Ever watch sumo?” He shakes his head and she nods, decisive. “We get back, I’ll get us box seats at the next tournament in Tokyo.”

“Meanwhile in Havana,” Tony cuts in, “this is not our hotel.”

“This is where I stop,” the taxi driver tells Natasha, turning down a cross street to park in front of an apartment building. He waves an arm back at the narrow street, “it’s in the middle of the block, above the bar.”

“Pay the nice man half,” She flips a wallet at Tony, which turns out to be from one of their assailants. “He’s going to wait here for us until I’m done.”

She slips out of the taxi and shoves the door shut before Bruce can follow, though Tony’s already coming around from the other side. “Please stay here. Give me ten minutes.”

“Natasha--”

“Trust me.” She reluctantly hands a metal rat tail comb to Tony with a pointed, “I don’t need any more loose cannons to keep track of. I _do_ need answers. Ten minutes, and then you two can come in, but give me the full ten.”

Tony quickly ascertains that the comb is also a butterfly knife, and eventually shrugs in something like agreement.

Bruce remains in the car, and has deliberately promised no such thing. She turns smartly on her toes, angling her elbow to hide her bandaged arm behind her purse strap. She drops into a swaying walk toward the hole in the wall cafe bar the driver had pointed out. They watch her chat with a couple gentlemen smoking just outside the door, all smiles and befuddlement, until one ushers her inside.

The driver lights out as expected after Bruce pays him from the stolen wallet, adding an extra fiver for the tire iron from the trunk.

“I thought she told you to stay,” Tony shoves his hands in his pockets as they walk around the back of the building, “who’s the bad dog now?”

“Clearly we both are.”

“Nice work in the alley earlier, though I get the feeling you went off the chain a little.”

Bruce could get angry like that, before the gamma pulse, if he’d let himself. He’d arranged his whole life around not letting himself react emotionally to much of anything, thinking he could will the anger out of existence if he kept himself numb. He wonders if maybe this isn’t so much a reintegration as it is a return to his original state. Only now, he recognizes the futility of ignoring his violent impulses, has in fact lost the ability to ignore his fractured emotional reactions. He knows from experience that the only way out is through.

Tony presses, “I’m guessing the Hulk-taming head trip doesn’t work now that you’re like this.”

“You fundamentally misunderstand what we’ve been working on,” Bruce says. “It’s not taming.”

“So it’s not about letting her under your skin?”

“There’s a lot of stuff under my skin right now.”

“Yeah. Some vacations are just a goddamned bust.” Tony yanks the tire iron out from where it’d been riding down his pant leg, “BTdubs, what would Melonballs’ BWF handle be?”

Bruce shakes his head but takes the iron anyway. “Bolas de Melão.”

~*~

Natasha knows she’s got about four minutes in the apartment before her backup arrives, tops, so she comes in swinging and takes control of the room within seconds.

It’s when she’s got the older man out from behind the desk, her knee in his back and her knife against his throat, that she sees a rustle in the curtain screening off a side room. The man is looking everywhere but there, and Natasha realizes she’s not quite got the head of the snake.

“Lo siento, señor,” she bounces his head off the desk and darts through the curtain with her gun drawn…

...into a kitchen, where a tiny woman in an apron and sturdy shoes oversees a collection of simmering pots, and a blonde woman in an ill-fitting severe wool suit sits at a kitchen table and smokes from a silver tipped cigarette holder. The table is set for two.

“Nataliya Romanova,” she croons in Russian, “such a pleasure to meet a fellow alumna. Please, join me for lunch.”

Natasha clocks several things at once: the woman at the stove is stirring a pot of lava hot stew and her grip on the handle is clearly braced to throw it at Natasha; the blonde woman’s suit doesn’t fit because it used to belong to the matronly Soviet contact from the park; the ashtray at her elbow is one of the green glass ones from the Golden Garden Club hotel; and there are more people coming into the room she’s just left, presumably clearing out the fallen from the sound of it.

“I must insist, Nata,” the blonde woman takes a last drag off the cigarette and exhales slowly from her nostrils, switching to English as she stubs out the butt. “You and I need to have a heart to heart about Peggy Carter.”

Natasha lowers her gun and slowly takes a seat. She keeps it on her thigh, aimed under the table with her trigger finger along the slide. The cook proceeds to serve them a spicy stew over rice.

She watches the blonde woman pour tiny cups of coffee, “You have me at a disadvantage…”

“I’m afraid I do,” her smile is sharp and genuine. “But you can call me Dottie Underwood. It’s as good a name as any. It’s how Peggy knows me.”

“Carter,” Natasha says, struck with the implications, “She knows about Krasnaya Komnata?”

“Oh please, like I’m a chatterbox or something. Carter walked the halls of it herself, trailing Howling Commandos, shooting the place up and taking prisoners. How did you think Leviathan came over to the US, like a spider on a banana boat?” She gestures with her fork before scooping up a mouthful. “Eat, Baby Widow. If I wanted to kill you I wouldn’t have missed earlier.”

The stew is peppery, slow simmered beef and vegetables, and Natasha estimates she has about two minutes before her backup arrives. This is not the situation she wants them coming into.

A young man, wiry musculature and a doting grandson’s deference, pops his head around the curtain and tells the cook that Lázaro is in hand, the goods and books are secure, and Naldo is ready to talk.

“Bueno, Silvio, bueno.” A profound satisfaction settles over the woman as she pulls off her apron and hands it to the young man to fold. She changes out of the sturdy maid’s shoes and into Italian pumps. She lifts a suit jacket from the back of Dottie’s chair, fine Italian wool. 

The young man hands Dottie the apron, into which he’s folded a thick manila envelope. She shoves it into the inside pocket of her jacket. “Always a pleasure, Doña Vera.”

Doña Vera places a tender kiss on the side of Dottie’s cheek, receives one back from Dottie, and pats her shoulder before leaving. 

“Silvio said you did excellent work in the alley after I left, which is honestly all I wanted from you. Such an A+ student, Nata, to do my homework for me, though I heard you cheated with a couple other students. And here you are, so hot on my trail I nearly didn’t make it up here before you did.”

Natasha thinks the outer room is just about cleared out, but she’s run out of time on her loose cannons arriving. With their total lack of armor or metamorphic rage or the element of surprise. “The way you speak, I’ll start expecting a cut of the profit.”

“Interesting.” Dottie says, taking a bite and watching Natasha.

“I’d rather we skipped the reptilian stare part and jumped to the negotiation, but it’s your scenario; run it as you see fit.” Natasha tucks into the meal, dismissive.

Dottie laughs, pitching a little Atlanta into her accent, “Goodness aren’t you just the most adorable little thing?”

“And you,” she points with her fork, “are something I was told couldn’t exist, a Red Room rogue.”

“I _am_ a bad girl,” Dottie admits, “your contact was quite appalled.”

“Before you killed her.”

“Nata, you goose--of course before I killed her. She couldn’t be anything after that.” Her eyes glint in counterpoint to the simplistic charm of her delivery. “Just like Boris in the swamp.”

Natasha mines the part of her that sees the humor in that, letting a snort of laughter escape.

“And besides, why would we have trained so hard to be whomever the situation requires...if we couldn’t then become whomever we wanted to be?”

Natasha slowly chews, and ponders what the outcome would have been if her contemporaneous self had met this woman. Terrifying. Glorious. The outer room is quiet like it’s empty, the door curtain still, but she hasn’t heard the outer door close.

Dottie leans over the plates, eyes piercing. “You’ve been gnawing at the leash, haven’t you?”

Natasha lets the fear for her friends swell up, lets her heart kick in her chest and the sweat break out on her temples and lip.

“You think you can’t survive in the cold, but you’re wrong, Baby Widow.” She relaxes back. “Now you know what I have on offer.”

“And your fee?”

“I prefer to think of it as the price of admission. All dithering aside, we both know why you’re here in Cuba. You’re here for Carter.” All southern charm and treacle disappear, replaced with the earnest intensity of a raptor diving. “You’re not going to do that.”

Natasha has suspected this, that Carter is a target if not the only target, the coincidences piling up fast and furious, but there’s still a difference between hearing it from Underwood and suspecting it. But she rolls with the intel, tries to not give anything away.

“Really?”

Dottie assures her, “Really.”

“So you say, but whether the local contact decides to pull the trigger or not, Havana is not DC, and accidents can happen here that don’t warrant international scrutiny or outrage. I’m very likely going to get the nod from Moscow to take that opportunity.”

“There are a lot easier ways to commit suicide. No. No one kills Carter except me. And I don’t want to.” Dottie looks askance, eyelids fluttering down in a parody of delicacy, but Natasha thinks it also deflects true emotion. “I reserve the right to change my mind, of course.”

“Of course,” Natasha echoes, cursing the sketchiness of early SSR files, because what the hell? And of course now there’s a shift in the curtain, which could be air currents in the outer room but that’s not very likely, is it?

The eyelids flick open for the penetrating stare. “Not one brunette hair, do you understand?”

Natasha sets down the fork and brings her gun hand up from her lap to rest on the table, where it can be seen from the gap in the curtain and hopefully mollify her backup. “You think you’re asking for her life, but you’re really asking for mine.”

“Baby, I’m not asking for it. I’ve already taken it. I’ve taken it from _them_. The choice before you is whether _you_ want it now.” Dottie takes a deep cleansing sigh. “Or whether I put you out of your misery.”

“I see.” Natasha says, “Are you having this little talk with all the people who might want to kill Margaret Carter?”

“No,” she smiles, rising slowly to her feet, “just you.”

“And if someone else succeeds?”

“I’ll kill them, too.” Dottie is downright cheerful, yanking open the window sash. The breeze that billows the curtains smells of more impending rain.

“Perhaps I take you out instead.”

“Perhaps,” she says, “a lot better people have failed, though.”

“You don’t really know me.”

“No offense, but neither do you.” Dottie slips her legs out the window and balances on the sill for a moment. “I suggest you figure it out ASAP and tell me. And give your new Borya a kiss for me, he's more handsome than the one you fed to gators.”

She drops into the alley, and is gone before Natasha can get her head out the window to look.

“Did she just--?” Tony racks the curtain back, “we’re three storeys up, there’s no balcony or fire escape.”

Bruce leaves his post by the outer door, taking in the tableau of the cramped kitchen and the gun in her hand. He has a tire iron in his fist, like that would have ended well. “What the hell is happening that the Kremlin sent two of you?”

She’s incredibly grateful they were more savvy than she’d given them credit for, but she’s also wrung out and knotted up inside, thinking of the decades of misery ahead of the woman she was in this time, before she’d broken herself free. “Dottie’s not on the roster. It seems I’m not the only one they’d lost a handle on over the years.” 

“How ya gonna keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree, eh?” Tony is camouflaging his jitters with an edged humor, and Bruce looks a soulful wreck. 

“Frankly?” Natasha shoves her gun back into her purse and heads for the door. “Some pretty hardcore brainwashing techniques.”

Tony breaks the pointed silence behind her with a murmured, “Fair enough,” and they follow her out to the street where Bruce hails a taxi.

~*~

Howard sits on the bed watching Maria at the dressing table, like she isn’t nervous enough sitting for a formal portrait for only the third time in her life.

“It’s not formal,” he argues, “just because it’s a nice camera. These are vacation shots.”

“You know,” she looks at him in the mirror, knocking powder off the puff, “it’s a gesture of trust that I’m letting you take any pictures of me at all.”

He flicks an eyebrow, “Are you officially visiting your mother, Miss Carbonell?”

“A friend from Smith, actually.” She lightly dusts her face, setting her makeup.

“These other formal portraits…?”

“My graduation, and before that my confirmation.” She squeezes the atomizer on the tiny travel bottle of perfume, letting the fog of _Emeraude_ settle onto her upper chest and neck. “I’m not counting when I was born and my mother let a traveling photographer take baby pics.”

Howard grins.

“On a fluffy white fleece,” she adds, face straight, “bare-ass naked.”

He crosses his heart, “I promise if anyone gets naked for the lens tonight it will only be me.”

When she rises to her feet he slips his arm around her waist and pulls her close, big brown eyes gone serious, “You’re beautiful.” She rolls her eyes but he gives her a little shake. “You don’t have to believe you are, just believe that I’m telling the truth.”

“Howard, I do believe you tell the truth.”

“There’s a but there...”

“I thought you said no one was getting naked?” She teases, leaning in close to ghost his lips with her breath, taking advantage of the fact he won’t kiss her just yet because he knows not to mess up a woman’s makeup. “At least until much later.”

“Ideally we’ll make it back to the room this time.”

“You don’t want to spend another morning with me picking splinters out of your backside?” She giggles and he kisses the end of her nose.

“Worth it.” He offers his arm to lead her into the sitting room of the suite. “Confirmation, eh? Who's your patron saint?”

She lifts her eyebrows in challenge, “Santa Caterina of Alexandria. They tried to break her on the wheel, but she broke the wheel first.”

“Good thinking.”

“Well, they beheaded her instead.”

“Ain’t that the way?”

~*~

The thing about hanging out with jet-setting superheroes is that an afternoon of gunfire doesn’t preclude an evening of cocktails. Tony and Natasha both might as well have spun into costume like Wonder Woman. Bruce is straggling behind still damp from the shower.

Tony pulls him aside in the elevator, whipping out a comb and fiddling with his hair.

“You’re fussing too much, are you trying for finger waves?” Natasha shakes her head, “You should tousle the top and be done with it.”

“He’s supposed to be a doctor, not Buddy Holly. I’m already swimming upstream with those glasses.” Tony does toss the top a little, dubious look on his face. “Maybe I went too light on the Brylcreem.”

Bruce smacks his hand away, “Stop that, I already feel like a salad.”

“You’re awfully touchy these days.”

“You’re the one trying to feel me up.”

“Maybe I want to give your sexy brain a handjob.”

“Brylcreem is _not lube_.”

They’re still pleasantly bickering about pomade when Natasha knocks and Ana opens the door with a flourish, revealing the whole tableau in the sitting room of Howard’s suite, everyone dressed for dancing like it’s homecoming night.

Tony stops dead in the hallway. Bruce lets Natasha sweep into the room ahead of them as the vivacious Clara, then turns to obscure Tony as he mouths, “Stark?”

Tony closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, “I recognize everyone’s clothes. An album...it’s an album in my mother’s study, and when Ana...she’ll give it to Jarvis when we lose Ana.”

Bruce licks his lips, poised between chivying him inside before they linger too long and yanking him back to the elevator with some bullshit excuse about his heart.

Tony smiles like his own discomfort delights him, patting Bruce on the arm, “I’m good, I’m great.” He squares his shoulders back and slips past him into the room with a fiercely whispered, “Tell her to get good shots.”

Bruce nods, and braces himself to be social.

~*~

“You’re not sitting for a formal portrait, Mr. Jarvis,” Clara says with a giggle, and Maria suspects that the woman is delighted by calling him _mister_ when she’s on first name basis with everyone else. Edwin Jarvis is a bastion of formality. Maria doesn’t know anyone younger than her grandparents who refer to their spouse to their face as _mister_ or _missus_. She wonders if it’s old world courtesy, a language barrier, or just the strangeness of calling someone so completely contained by a simple first name.

Clara places the camera on the coffee table, and approaches the couple. “May I?” she asks Ana, who nods.

Ana's smile is so warm that Clara smiles back naturally at her, softer and shifted to one side with dimples. Clara finds the pins in Ana’s braided updo, and lets the plaits fall down to her shoulders. There’s a careful tenderness that crosses Mr. Jarvis’ face at that, an unveiling of him more than her, a glimpse into their private world.

Maria chastises herself for feeling envious of them, the connection between them. It was better before she had an idea of what it would be like to have something like that, when she was saying no to a houseful of children and chores. She reminds herself that sharing a bed on vacation doesn’t make it love no matter what Howard thinks, that the warm sweetness is infatuation, not a chance at anything more. That you can’t build a marriage on screwing in Havana...even if it’s the most fun you’ve ever had with anyone else, and the two of you spent an hour talking about harnessing lightning when the thunder woke you up the night before.

“It’s a gathering of friends,” Clara says. “You’ll look back on these, and you’ll wish you’d felt, well, friendlier.”

“Oh, but I am very friendly,” Ana says cheerfully, and lays gentle fingers on her husband’s thigh.

Mr. Jarvis nods at her, answering a question she didn’t need to ask out loud, baring his throat for her to undo his tie

“He will blush if you touch him,” Ana says, conspiring, but still looking at her husband. Neither flinches at the snaps of flash as Clara takes their picture, the intimacy caught on camera.

After that it’s easy. Howard plies them all with liquor, which they accept readily while Angie starts up the record player.

Peggy sways a little and perks up. She’d cut her hair recently and looks far older, her beauty matured but still striking with those intense dark eyes, her commanding height next to Angie’s pixie frame Angie leans against her, bright eyes and bright makeup, a natural flush to her cheek.

The song turns to _In the Mood_ , and she grabs Peggy’s hand with a giggle, swinging her into a jitterbug. The camera flashes again and again, and Maria thinks of being a girl, listening to this on the radio, dancing with her sisters and cousins and chattering about the days when the older girls would step out with handsome soldiers who held their waists so tightly and kissed them in the shadows and tasted like sherbet punch. Maria wonders if she’d be able to tell, if she didn’t already know, that Angie and Peggy are sweethearts by the way they dance, the dexterous tangle of their fingers and how close they step together, so _known_ to each other.

Peggy spins Angie out and then back into her arms, but her eyes cut to Eddie Stark.

Maria gives him more than a passing glance herself and is struck by his paleness, lodged into the corner of the couch gripping an untouched glass. His doctor sits beside him, not attending to him despite his obvious distress, but a solid presence against his shoulder.

Eddie catches her staring, but before she can drop her gaze he breaks out into a sharp grin, dark brown eyes so like Howard’s, but glistening, like he’s decided to laugh when he wants to cry. Hank says something toward his ear, too low to hear, and he bites his lower lip and shakes his head.

Clara steps in front of her, pulling a funny face, and Maria lets herself be distracted and directed toward the French doors where Howard leans rakishly.

~*~

The hotel bed is a dream, Angie thinks, the perfect firmness, with down pillows and such soft sheets. She loves this bed, and not just because of the woman in it.

“You’re used to getting your picture taken,” Peggy says, twisting her hand into Angie’s hair as she arches her neck, eyes fluttering shut against the damp kisses being pressed against her throat. “I’m sure you’ll look lovely and natural. I doubt the same will be true for the rest of us.”

Angie recognizes Clara as a fellow performer, and the smiling for the camera has left her giddy, aroused, desperate to coax out and capture the real warmth behind the stilted smile Peggy offered the lens. She hums distractedly, her focus on the slippery circles she’s rubbing between the lips of Peggy’s cunt, just enough pressure to tease, not enough to satisfy. Making Peggy arch, and moan, making her beg for more is one of the great pleasures of Angie’s life.

Peg is so put together, it takes persistence and a delicate touch to break through that shell, but when she opens up she simply _melts_.

Angie’s delicate camisole is falling off her shoulders and rucked up into a satiny swath that bares all. Peggy cups her breast, nails scraping along her sensitive nipple before catching it in a twist that makes her gasp, delicious pain that has the desired effect of making Angie stop teasing and take her properly in hand.

Angie revels in the roll of luscious hips beneath her, the equally luscious moan against her lips as she mouths and gently bites Peg’s neck.

She never wants to seem desperate, even here in the bedroom, but Angie can bring it out of her, the vibrating, keening need. It’s one of the things she’ll desperately miss, and she wants to think Peggy will miss it too, even if it’s not enough to outweigh the duty that calls. To be fair, she had an ear cocked for that call long before she met Angie, which is why Angie doesn’t let herself resent the fact she could never convince Peg to ignore it for more than a little interlude like this.

She would much rather be proud of Peg for doing what she thinks needs to be done. It’s not like Angie ever stopped hearing her own call, after all.

At this moment Peggy is in her arms, and they are in this tropical paradise with friends they mostly don’t have to pretend in front of, and Angie will take what she can get. Right this moment she’s got a gorgeous woman coming apart under her hands, then surging up like vengeance to take her apart in turn, with lips and fingers and that sharp wicked tongue.

Later, her head pillowed on Angie’s thigh, Peg says, “I’d like to see those pictures.”

Angie teases, “Because you can’t stand not knowing something?”

“Perhaps I’m just curious as to what Clara saw in each of us.” Peggy levels a cool stare that Angie still sees right through, laughing her out of it.

“She was good at drawing us out, finding the people to photograph behind the pretense,” Angie agrees. “But that sounds like an excuse. Besides, she’ll need to find somewhere to develop them. We won’t see them until we all get back to the States.”

“Mmm,” Peggy says, and Angie knows that won’t be the end of it.


	4. Mr. Peabody & Sherman to the Rescue - Tuesday, Sept. 2, 1952

### CH4 - Mr. Peabody & Sherman to the Rescue - Tuesday, Sept. 2, 1952

Tony commences snoring just after three, and doesn’t stop even after Bruce gets up, walks to the bed, and jabs at him until he rolls over, so Bruce finally heads down to the lobby at six. He’s drinking weak tea and flipping through newspapers, making some idle notes on how M-theory and string theory are getting thoroughly fucked by a peevish god. He knows Natasha plans on checking in with a backup contact this morning, and figures he’ll go with her if she wants.

She’s adjusting her hat, tying the straps under her chin as she walks into the lobby. The small gestures, her posture, the way she holds her mouth, all designed to paint a portrait of a young woman at some loose ends. It’s so foreign, so alien that he recoils a little. Then she catches sight of him and her smile shifts just a fraction, and it’s her, and he can breath again--or rather he can’t, but the disquiet has been replaced with heat.

“C’mon,” she says, “I’ll buy you a nice cuppa Joe.”

The coffee stand is within walking distance of the hotel. It’s early enough that the heat hasn’t yet caught up with the sticky humidity that’s like walking in a sauna. Natasha perches on a stool at the counter, angled to watch the restaurant patio next door, and orders cafecitos. The crash of the sea is a low buzz over the hum of early morning traffic.

“Are you sure we’re supposed to meet someone here?”

She sips from her tiny cup, eyes sharp. 

“Okay.” Bruce tries to look nondescript, slugging back his own thick sweet cafecito like a shot. He’s restless, eyes itchy, muscles stiff from fatigue and tension and sensory overload. There’s so much input, and without the need to be constantly on his guard, the niggling tendrils of distraction and impulse are growing harder to avoid.

Natasha points at the pastries, and Bruce hands over a couple bills to the barista. He orders two more cafecitos, though she’s still nursing her first.

She declines a second cup and he shrugs and lines them both up for himself.

“I’m sure we could find you some cocaine,” Natasha says, “if you really want to push your limits.” 

“I’m good, thanks,” he leans into Natasha as she takes the pastelito, nestled in a stack of napkins. “I’m just enjoying the small indulgences.”

Her mouth curves, it’s own indulgence.

They watch a waiter deliver water and a bottle of Coca-Cola to a couple of young women sitting close and talking animatedly.

Natasha looks around the cafe. “The only things I remember about Bogdan,” she says absently, “is that he liked American waitresses, and that he couldn’t shake his accent in Miami. We had to speak French to not draw attention.”

This is another indulgence: watching her face as she digs out these pieces of herself and lays them out for him. Expressions flit across her features like vaporous clouds scudding quickly across a vault of sky.

“I don’t know why I remember that.” Swirling the sugar around the bottom of the demitasse cup, she adds, “Killing him though...” she lifts one slim shoulder like it’s not even worth a full shrug, but he knows it bothers her. 

They’ve spoken before about her past sins, in roundabout ways, hints and gestures, moments of cold clarity. She’s been scrupulous to make sure he understands how very dangerous she is. It’s never filled him with the horror she’d clearly been anticipating; has instead dug this well of compassion for her, for the person she is working to be. Each time he presses his palm to hers, struggling to make peace with the other guy, to build safeguards and protocols, his greatest comfort is that the effort is shared, carried between them, both of them striving to be better. Safer.

He tilts his cup towards her, his own benediction, and nods at the pastry.

She glances around again, leaning in like she’s sharing an observation more secretive than, “Guava.”

She breaks it apart, passing him half, and brushes sugar from her lips with a slow sweep of her thumb, licking the pad. Bruce concentrates on the dregs of coffee at the bottom of his cup.

When he looks up, it’s to see Peggy and Angie strolling through the square.

“Interesting,” Natasha murmurs, folding the stack of napkins into her bag. She waves to them.

Angie comes over to their table while Peggy orders from the counter.

“You’re up early,” Natasha says, looking up at the other woman. Angie shields her eyes.

“Supposedly it’s healthy, a morning stroll.” She sounds dubious, and Bruce ducks his head to obscure his smirk.

Angie catches his eye anyway, and winks, then turns back to Natasha, “Thanks for the photos,” she says, her tone honeyed, “And I hate to ask, because you’ve already been so sweet to us…”

Natasha radiates open innocence, and Bruce covers his mouth with a napkin. He’s a terrible spy, but if he wants to keep tagging along he has to behave.

Angie looks over her shoulder, then leans in. “I’d love to get one for Peggy, frame it before we go. To celebrate her days before wedded bliss, you know?”

Natasha shakes her head, eyes wide in a gesture of faux helpless sympathy that Bruce has seen in action a few times but is still floored by the effectiveness of.

“I don’t have any equipment here for developing,” she says, “and it’ll be a large job.”

“I think I can help with that,” Angie says, full conspirator mode. “If you’re willing?”

~*~

Someone is definitely breaking into her suite, and has stopped bothering to hide it to the point of leaving a calling card: one of her own dark red hairs, wrapped around the handles of her wardrobe and woven together in an infinity symbol.

Carter is a possibility - she’s still clearly suspicious of all three of them - although this is showy and deliberate. Natasha has odds on Underwood. Or an unknown culprit who’s maybe better, maybe worse, absolutely annoying.

Still, turnabout is fair play. She confirms subtly with Lur that Peggy and Angie are playing tennis, and does a sweep of their joined suite.

She finds a small camera, a few reels of audio tape, and a notebook. Nothing else to indicate that Peggy is down here for anything more than intel gathering, which seems to be an exercise in frustration. She spot checks the tape, which is blank. The uncoded notebook, written in a heavy scrawling hand to read like a superficial diary, contains a final entry that ends with _“Bloody idiots._ ” Of course, that could refer to Natasha and her friends, to the Starks-to-be, or to the Cuban underground. Natasha guesses that Peggy Carter hasn’t spend a lot of time in the tropics of Latin America, battered between the competing agendas of superpowers. Natasha doesn’t need perfect recall to remember the mid-century headaches of American fueled dictatorships versus communist-fueled resistance, and vice-versa.

No wonder Carter is antsy. Like Natasha, it seems that she’s a thoroughbred being used as a draft horse. The question in both cases is why. Carter’s skills skew heavily to dissemination, action, motivation, and management of both people and information. She was never much of a field agent, far better as someone divining and scheming the schemes, driving the action.

Sending her to Cuba to liaise and investigate smacks of talent being buried, ambition being punished. 

Natasha’s own assignment is less of a mystery. The likelihood that it’s going to intertwine with Carter’s mission is growing larger and larger, but the frustration is getting to Natasha.

She’s tired of waiting for an answer, waiting for a new contact to give her more crumbs. She’s ready to draw one out.

~*~

Maria has been playing footsie with him all during lunch, which has only underlined for Howard how very far over his head he is with this. Her face remains placid, just a little sheen across her nose from the heat. They talk about the programs she’d handed off to the ladies who punch the cards before she left for vacation, how she sometimes works a spare machine herself to get her cards faster and see the output of her code that much sooner.

“Can’t type worth a darn, but I do alright. It’s an iterative process, so I can get another cycle or two in while the rest are waiting for their cards in the regular queue.”

All the while she’s worked the progression up from playing with the cuff of his pant leg under the cover of the tablecloth, to doffing her sandals and pulling down his sock with her humid little toes.

Howard sets down his fork when she sidles her foot up past his calf and runs it, ticklish and warm, along his inner thigh. “Devil woman.”

“I’d be offended,” she hums, as if she isn’t cradling his balls against the sole of her foot - Catholic girls, Jesus - and fixes him with such an earnest look that it makes him swallow, “but I did come with you here just to take advantage of you.”

“I think you’ve got it backward.”

“Do I?”

“Any objective observer would say so.”

“That because not so very long ago I was untouched and unsullied by man, while you are an infamous libertine, catting about, scattering Tiffany bracelets in your wake, that I’m the poor soul on the losing end?”

“That’s not how I’d put it--"

“Me neither.” Maria grins. “I was thinking of it like this: I brought in a consultant with a sterling reputation for leaving the customer satisfied.”

Howard sits up from his sprawl, balling up his napkin to throw it on his plate. “Is that what I am to you, Miss Carbonell? A piece of meat? Some slab of dry-aged prime rib? You wound me!” He’s slipped his thumb between her big toe and the rest, and has determined that they’ve lingered long enough over lunch that the garden is deserted and the waiter has written them off.

“You’ll get over it,” she says, smiling.

“Maybe,” he says, “You gonna help me with that?” He ducks under the table.

“How--" Maria cuts off, realizing she’d only bring attention to the situation. She whispers fiercely, “Get back up here now!”

The reply is muffled by the table, her skirts, and the skin of her thigh, “Not until you apologize.”

She rearranges her silverware and tries to maintain composure as his knuckles brush against silk, teasing. The romp in the pool cabana was one thing - she’d been all worked up from dancing and behaving herself among company, but that hadn’t been broad daylight under a tablecloth. It’s getting very warm with two people under a skirt meant for one. Thinking about the cabana romp was a mistake. “Well this is certainly not an inducement.” 

He hums in agreement before pausing to reply, “What if this consultant never finishes the job?” The nuzzling contradicts his premise, but Maria is aware Howard is also quite capable of cutting his nose off to spite his face, or other body parts. “Maybe I take a page out of the virgin’s handbook and stop putting out until marriage?”

“Are you seriously giving me an ultimatum, Mr. Stark?”

He's quiet, thumbs skimming the curves where her belly and legs meet, and his voice has lost the teasing edge and turned fond, almost sad. “I would if I had the heart for it... but I suspect if you're dead set against my hand I'll give you whatever you _do_ want.”

Maria realizes how hard she's gripping the fork, and carefully sets it down. She slips a hand under the table and into the collar of his shirt. “Damn it, Howard.”

~*~

Ana offers Natasha tea and cookies while Jarvis uses the advantage of height to seal up the doorway of the palatial bathroom, converting it into a darkroom. Natasha declines the snack, preferring to check out the equipment laid out along the counter. 

Jarvis has rigged the drying area over the bathtub, acquired an amber light that’s being bounced off the far corner of the ceiling away from the enlarger, which is high-end. The entire set-up looks like it’s been packed up and borrowed wholesale; trays, tongs, chemicals, even a paper safe perched on the toilet. Everything is well placed, and Natasha accepts Jarvis’s offer of help, a kind of apology for the request that the Stark party take a set of prints back with them.

He doesn’t need to be instructed, and Natasha knows she shouldn’t be surprised. “You’ve done this before, I think, Mr. Jarvis.”

He keeps his eyes on the timer, letting the paper drip for another couple seconds before sliding it deftly into the tray of fixer. “Mr. Stark built me a dark room in Los Angeles.” He pauses in thought, still agitating the paper in the tray. “It was some time ago, when the subjects were largely young ladies in bathing suits that he was trying to...well, I do believe his intentions were honorable, at least more honorable than it might sound. The young ladies have gone, but the skills remained.”

Natasha struggles with a laugh. The Howard Stark here, lovelorn and a little devious, more sharp edges and wary glances, seems far removed from the mustachioed lothario his reputation had suggested. He’s a different man, she thinks, from the one Steve remembered as well. Not simply the domestication, but the gravity. Howard is facing the future now, leaving past dalliances behind and looking for real connection. The parallel with his son is almost shocking.

Mr. Jarvis shakes a photo and pins it to the line. It’s of Howard and Maria, his hand on her shoulder gentle but possessive, her hand reaching up to cover his like catching a butterfly. The shot hangs next to one of Carter with legs crossed and shoulders tilted, shrewd and contained, looking across the room with a smile. Ana sits next to her, mid-gesture but serene, a study in grace and amazing bone structure.

“You’ve captured them well,” he says. “You’ve a keen eye.” It doesn’t sound quite as much like a compliment as the words would imply.

“I pay attention,” she says, subtle, teasing out where he’s going with this.

“It’s uncomfortable to see one’s thoughts captured for posterity,” he remarks, dry.

“Notice which end of the camera I prefer,” she jokes, but he looks at her over the top of his reading glasses, recognizing the sincerity.

She deflects again, pulling the last photo from the developer tray to let drip. “Your work, I believe.”

It’s of the three of them. Natasha had set the camera down to accept a glass of champagne, more concerned with keeping the three-quarter sleeves of her blouse pulled down enough to conceal the healing cuts on her arm. Jarvis had been peering at the lens, and she’d reassured him that he was welcome to take a look at the camera. She hadn’t realized until now that he’d taken candids of his own.

In the photo Natasha slips into the stop bath, she’s sitting on the arm of Bruce’s chair, fingers resting at the edge of his collar, and her face is turned up toward Tony with clear concern. Tony stands at the apex between them with the perfect posture he has when he’s braced against pain, but his expression back at her is...fond. Bruce’s attention is caught between them, holding a champagne flute by his knee, leaning his neck against her fingers. It’s moment of subtle intimacy, shared between the three of them. An eloquent statement of connection.

“Everyone should have some happy memories preserved in time,” Mr. Jarvis says, and there’s a remarkable kindness in his voice.

~*~

Tony’s ability to plot a trajectory is truly phenomenal even with a bocce ball, to the point of impressing Howard. Bruce is a scattershot mess in contrast. Angie cackles as his red ball stops far short of the little yellow pallino.

“I gotta think you’re a lot better hands-on, Doc,” Howard gives a wry shake of his head while Ana steps up with her green ball, “since Eddie’s still walking around.”

Bruce plasters on a look of blank patience, the one he uses in crowds to deflect machismo, but like so much of his habits and methods since coming to Havana, it’s not working. Howard makes a conciliatory gesture as if Bruce had bared his teeth instead.

Angie and Maria are both old hands, and the ladies take that frame easily.

Tony claps a steadying hand on Bruce’s shoulder, a surreptitious glance to check in, but Bruce shakes his head. He’s not a delicate flower; if anything, it’s strangely gratifying to let himself wallow in the frustration. His aim is usually not this terrible, it’s like he can’t modulate the muscle forces correctly. It’s fascinating. It’s annoying as shit. He kind of wants to get really pissed just because he _can_ and no one will die.

They play a few games as the weather heats up, and there’s not even a breeze for Bruce to blame his terrible game on, as he bowls worse and worse, indulging in punching at the air with a grunt as his ball swings wide or sails past.

Ana sidles up to him with the gentlest smirk he’s ever seen, “Are you so offended by the ladies winning, Hank?”

“Hardly,” Bruce laughs, harsh, “I’m offended by how terrible I am at this.”

“Maybe we should head back to the pool, cool off.” Tony joins them with a reassuring smile for Ana, but she seems unfazed, fanning herself with her hat. He mutters to Bruce, “So is it you or the other guy who’s shit at bocce?”

Bruce whips his ball at a palm tree trunk. It bounces back hard enough to roll up against the carrying case with a clunk.

“BB,” Tony shoves his hands in his pockets and sighs, covering his slip by elaborating, “baby boy, did you just throw your ball like a fucking cranky toddler?”

“Don’t be a killjoy,” Ana taps her hat against Tony’s shoulder, “it’s the best shot he’s made all day.”

~*~

When she returns to her suite after working with Jarvis, Natasha orders room service and opens the suitcase. A bulging coin purse rests on top. She has failed to share this little detail with Bruce and Stark, the pointed messages the suitcase has been sending in answer to questions she’s not always aware she’s asking. Sometimes the suitcase offers up clothing, cosmetics, technology, each tinged with hints of memory. They all feel like transmissions, reprimands, even when they’re something necessary. She doesn’t know what this batch is trying to tell her.

She sits down at the table and opens the purse, which is full of matchbooks. She pours them onto the flat surface to sift through them, flip them open and read the insides, see the color of the match heads. 

She’s made it through three when the pattern emerges. These are markers, mementos from various points in Eastern Europe, a cocktail bar road map of places where she’d made men yearn and suffer. 

Each one triggers a whisper of memory, momentary horror, until she’s awash in sex and death, parts of her past that live somewhere in the masked neurotransmitters of her strategically damaged brain. She arranges them in a timeline with shaking hands, and knows she’s not going to eat the steak she’d ordered. 

She gets out the sales order book she’d picked up when she bought the half-dozen hearing aids for Tony to tinker with. It was to be a prop, a few fake entries scrawled in for the times they were supposed to be in meetings, but now she thinks of Carter's masterwork of mnemonics couched in seemingly vague diary writing, and she likes the challenge. A paper record goes against all of her training, but her own codes are obscure, meaningful only to her in this time. She describes the fleeting images as best she can, trying to capture the scattershot pieces of her past. 

As ugly as they are, these are memories she didn’t have before. She loathes the story they tell, yet still welcomes the narrative.

She thinks of Dottie, writing her own story out here in this limbo of international diplomacy, forging a path of assassination and threats, but developing an odd moral compass that involves keeping Peggy Carter alive. Perhaps not so different from Natasha’s hierarchy of survival: Laura Barton and the kids, civilians, Clint, Nick, the other Avengers who need it, with the world as a whole the wildcard that could potentially override it all. In the face of danger to the Barton kids, she’d effortlessly make the same kind of cold threats as Dottie had, and if need be she’d follow through without ever thinking twice.

That's where Bruce differs. He’ll always think twice, even when the Other Guy is already in action, and it’s that disconnect that haunts him. Her monster is so very easy, while his is so very difficult.

Her hands shake as she puts the final matchbook back in the bag, and closes her order book. It’s getting late. Neither Bruce nor Tony have checked in for hours. She’s grateful not to be fielding their questions on the little sack of souvenirs, but feels an unexpected spike of compassion for her former SHIELD handlers, particularly early in her career--constantly wondering if radio silence meant she’d gone rogue.

The two of them could be drinking piña coladas in the lounge.

Or they could be interrogating Howard Stark about vita(gamma)-rays.

Or building a time machine in the pool pump house.

She’s restless and unsettled, wants to erase the sour taste of pickled nostalgia, so she turns to sorting the finished photos. Carter had arranged that bit of business easily enough, whether to keep Natasha occupied or to gauge something from the photos themselves, she doesn’t know. Maybe pushing at their cover stories, maybe for her own more personal reasons.

Natasha looks carefully through these snapshots in time, and hopes that she’s captured Stark’s memories accurately. The photo of her and Bruce and Tony is in her hand when Bruce knocks on the door.

She hadn’t been sure he’d show up tonight.

His hair is damp and his skin smells of chlorine and sunshine, limes and rum. Something in her eases at the sight of him and she smiles, deliberately letting that show.

His eyes are hazy but he catches her look and swallows hard. For a long moment he stands in her doorway, teeth against his bottom lip, meeting her gaze. 

She could touch him, skim her fingertips along his skin, and it’s so tempting that she clenches her fist and steps aside, the photo warping in her hand. Bruce zeroes in on the picture as he enters, curious, so she hands it over.

“Snorkeling,” Bruce says absently, in explanation, “in the pool. Tony sweet-talked the instructor into a lesson for us and Angie and Maria. Mostly, we kicked around the pool and dove for rings, like a kid’s party game.” He holds the photo with fingers catching the edges from underneath, as if his fingerprints would mar it. “And then there were daiquiris.”

Pitchers, if she's not mistaken.

The blurriness of the alcohol has softened him, and he pushes back into the settee as he stares hard at the photo, laying it down on his lap.

“I’m glad no one drowned.” She’s regained her composure.

She hands him a glass of soda water and sits across from him, legs tucked under. She’s in a pair of shorts and a sleeveless button-up top, a compromise between the more formal day wear and the frankly sensual sleepwear that comprises most of her wardrobe here.

His smile is a little sardonic, and it doesn't linger. He rarely drinks at home, at least not enough to show, and she wonders what it’s doing for him here. He methodically downs the water, and she notes his pliability in following another of her suggestions.

“If nothing else, your current state has made it easier to build the association of safety and trust.”

“Are you suggesting I'm trusting you because of the booze?”

“I meant you being Banner and Hulk, i.e., _Hank_. Gives me more access to what's usually buried pretty deep.”

He sets the glass down with a clink, unsettled.

“I take it that hadn't occurred to you?”

“Downside of the booze, I guess, slows down the brain.”

“I wasn't going to ask, since I'm not concerned, just curious,” Natasha says, “but since you bring it up, what is the upside?”

“Local anaesthesia,” Bruce quips, then shakes his head and lets out a frustrated breath. He’s looking down at the photo, balanced on his leg. “It dulls it all down, the intensity. Everything is…so immediate, every stimulus is cranked up, every impulse itches. A little bit of numbness is a relief. Distracts me from rationalizing bad choices that sound really appealing.”

He looks up at her, and she can feel the weight of that gaze, the intensity behind it, and if she were playing this she’d bite her lip, shorten her breath and let a flush steal over her cheeks. She doesn’t want to play this though, wants to give an honest response to his confession, so she takes the photo from him and sets it on the ground.

“Bad choices,” she echoes, running her thumbs thoughtfully over his knuckles, where bruises bloom in technicolor. 

He watches her touch him. His voice is so soft, conflicted. “I should go to bed, I’m wasting your time.”

“It’s good to practice. Compromised, or fully cognizant.” Her thumbs come to rest in the notches between his knuckles. “The signals and cues are just as important. And it’s all about timing, right, manipulating the space and time between transformations. Even with this integration, there seems to still be...space there, for you to access. A state of mind, perhaps?”

“I think,” he says, husky in a way that curls her toes, “that I might really be compromised.” 

Natasha turns his wrist towards her and pushes up his sleeve to expose the brown leather strap of his watch. She doesn’t remember if he'd been wearing his own when they time-shifted, chunky metal links like a brushed silver manacle, but this one suits him better...warm, worn leather, a heavy round bezel and matte gold face.

The mismatched filigree hour hand and blocky minute hand point in the wrong directions, the second hand clearly bent now that its sweep has been paused.

“Time’s stopped,” she says, coaxing his hand further into her lap, laying his fingers out over her bare knee. She spins the tiny knob, warm from his wrist.

“My real watch is self-winding as I move,” he explains, his fingers flexing briefly, snags from the pool bottom against her skin.

She slows so she won’t overwind it. “You’re real here, too.” She pulls the stem and resets the time, pressing it back in with a click. She slides her fingers along his, letting him go. His thumb rubs small circles on her inner thigh, palm spread wide, holding her steady. Her voice sounds odd to her ears when she asks, “Are you ready?”

He shakes his head, but his eyes have gone the color of jade.

She holds up her hand, palm open to him. She takes a moment to loosen the muscles of her rib cage and jaw, so when she speaks it's a smooth wave of sound, “Hey.”

He swallows and raises his own dominant hand, his right mirrored to her left, his eyes looking between her gesture and her face.


	5. Are You There, Odin? It’s Me, Margaret - Wednesday, Sept. 3, 1952

### CH5 - Are You There, Odin? It’s Me, Margaret - Wednesday, Sept. 3, 1952

“Why are we still here, seriously?” Tony says, petulant. He’s been pacing the room, picking things up, rearranging them, and he’s putting everyone on edge. It’d been his turn to sleep on the settee the night before. “I see them together, I’ve...I think I _heard_ them together the other night, and god if that isn’t a memory I’d like to wipe. So why the fuck are we still stuck in this godforsaken paradise?”

“Sex isn’t love Tony,” Bruce can’t quite tamp down the wry amusement.

“And the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist,” Tony counters.

“Clearly they’re still working things out.”

“I know that, I just...how much longer am I supposed to watch them smolder at each other, and wonder if they’ll go back home to their separate lives, or fulfill their legacy of, well, me?”

Bruce’s shrug and head shake is a multiverse in itself, frustration, compassion and dread.

Natasha interrupts, “We need to go out in public,” folding a blanket and putting it into the basket along with the French sunscreen and another cypher, this time _Movie Stars Parade_ with Doris Day on the cover. She adds a cloth covered book. “Draw out whomever is watching us. Because whether or not your parents have committed to a life that ends in your glorious conception, we’re still in the midst of this...caper. I’m an active agent, and I need to assess the other players.”

Tony pats the pockets of his linen pants with a frown. “I hate carrying cash,” he says, locating his wallet on the dresser. “Also, aren’t the Russians following us? I thought that was the idea.”

“Not the Russians,” she says, searching the room herself now, brow crinkled. “Though, apparently Underwood is keeping a close eye.”

“So we go to the beach to be sitting targets in the sand?”

“No one is going to shoot at us at the beach,” she says. “Unless we do something wrong.”

Bruce is fiddling with the sunglasses she’s been looking for, so she holds out her hand. 

He puts them on instead. “How do we define wrong?” The swooping cat-eye frames work on his face as well, drawing attention down to his mouth. She knows the trick but she falls for it anyway, and has to look away quickly when he presses his lips together to add, “Hmmm?”

“Well,” she says, “We’ll know if they start shooting.”

He takes off the glasses, “Rosy.”

The weather is supposed to remain pleasant until early afternoon, so instead of calling a taxi, the concierge helps them rent a couple Lambretta scooters.

Tony quirks an eyebrow. “Rock, paper, scissors for bitch seat?”

He ends up riding behind Bruce. 

“Never doubt my roshambo, Tony.”

They set up a blanket on the sand and rent striped beach chairs. Tony flips through the magazine, reading out highlights from an article supposedly written by Tony Curtis, ‘ _Beware of Summer Love’_ , but he attributes the quotes to Spartacus instead. Natasha spreads sunscreen down her pale shins, nimble fingers gliding up around the complicated planes of her kneecap, the tender skin behind the joint.

Bruce takes a deep breath, realizing he's been mesmerized. “I’m going to check out the water.” He walks down into the surf without looking back. 

He lets the tide suck at his feet, sand shifting out from beneath his soles. He’s never cared much for the ocean, but the water is preferable to wrestling with the almost overwhelming desire to smooth the thick lotion across her shoulder blades, down her spine, feel slick warmth as her body absorbs the cream, glossy and supple. He digs his nails into his palms, ashamed.

It’s like being a wretched teenager again - distracted by skin and softness - with the killing blow being that incisive mind of hers. The threat to his equilibrium that she represents, even as she offers balance and counterpoint. It’s not just Natasha, not just desire. It’s longing if he’s honest, of the sort he’s been carefully filing away for a while now at home, shoving it all into a neat little box labeled Things We Can’t Have Because We Break Them.

It’s also the way the sun is too hot. The air too bright. The traffic too loud. The damned mutating drinks, even the cafecito taking on a NyQuil green licorice funk when he didn’t drink it fast enough. All of it keyed into his anger centers, petty annoyances he’d long ago learned to shake off that now seem to hook into his skin like brambles. His own heartbeat is heavy and thudding. His brain won’t turn off, circling around the worry creasing Tony’s face, the game Natasha’s playing without knowing the rules or the stakes...and this thumping fear and giddy joy at the prospect of no longer being a weapon of mass destruction. What price will he pay for it? There’s always a price.

 _Please_ , he thinks, _don’t let the price be those people waiting for me on the beach._

Bruce steps deeper into the water, sand pushing away under his feet, moving through the roll of waves until he’s hip deep. He should probably worry about sharks, jellyfish, other poking, biting creatures. But the water is just this side of pleasant, cool and bracing, so blue against the white sand as the sun pounds on his shoulders and back. Prickly and itchy from the sun and the salt, the surge of water, he dives into the waves.

The undertow catches him, yanking him down and rolling him.

He scrambles to find the sand with his hands, tries to plant his feet a couple times before he finds purchase. He sputters when he finally breaks the surface, gasping for air.

Braced and renewed, Bruce shakes his head like a dog, and drags himself from the sea.

Spotting his friends on the beach, he realizes that Tony still has his shirt on, unbuttoned but draped over the scar in his sternum. It’s a moment of rare self-consciousness from Stark, vulnerability, and Bruce aches a little for him. The constant reminder of this thing that nearly killed him.

Sometimes, Bruce thinks, he needs to get out of his own fucking head and remember that pain exists for other people.

“Saw you go under,” Tony says, handing him a towel. “You were there for awhile.”

Bruce shrugs. “Undertow.” He scrubs his head with the towel, whacks his palm on his ear to get the water out, rubs his chest dry.

Natasha’s head tilts, but her eyes are hidden by the big buglike sunglasses. With the black swimsuit and the lipstick, her hair swept back, she looks elegant and untouchable, or at least he tries to think so. A dusting of freckles is coming up on her arms and chest, like film developing, and the white lines where her sandal straps would go have already blushed pink.

“Three o’clock,” she says in code. He glances in that direction.

On the edge of the sand, he sees two men sitting on beach towels in black trunks, smoking and drinking beer and listening to a transistor radio. 

“Soviets?” he asks.

She nods. 

“You’re guessing.” Tony asks, “How do you know that for sure?”

She’s vaguely impatient, clearly this is a continued conversation. “I just do.”

“Not good enough.”

She purses her mouth, and Bruce can see her trying for patience, but also working through how to explain what to her is obvious. “Hair style, pinkie ring on the one, the cigarettes and the way they smoke them. The mannerisms.”

“I thought spies were supposed to blend.”

“They aren’t spies, just agents. And they do blend; you didn’t notice them.”

“There’s a difference?” Bruce puts the towel around his neck and sits on the edge of the blanket, rummaging in the basket for the sandwiches the hotel had provided along with bottled lemonade and beer. “Between a spy and an agent?”

She raises an eyebrow, gives a terse, “Yes.” But her gaze is keen when she pushes her sunglasses up onto her head.

“Alright, eagle eye,” Tony says, “Who else is watching us?”

“Americans,” she gracefully takes a sandwich from Bruce with a subtle gesture behind him at the same time. A tan couple, both in blue, frolic over there.

“He has his watch on,” she says. “CIA. Definitely.”

“And you think they’re surveilling us?” Bruce recognizes that this is also a subtle difference.

She considers. “I don’t know. I think they’re all keeping tabs on Peggy Carter and associates, and they’re definitely watching each other, and we keep walking into their sight lines.”

Tony bites at his sandwich like it’s a bastion of simplicity in an insane world.

She pauses. “Or maybe they’re watching us for completely independent reasons.”

“Or both,” Bruce suggests, and she gives him a smile like he’s the star pupil she expects.

“Yes,” she says, “Or both.”

They finish lunch, and Natasha gets up to wash her hands off in the ocean. They both watch her go, the way she draws the attention of half the beachgoers, looking to get noticed, the sway of her hips, the angle of her shoulders, tilt of her chin. It’s a sight.

“Makes me feel dirty,” Tony says. “Am I getting soft?”

“Could it be a healthy respect for your team mate?”

“That sounds boring, but sure.”

When she gets back, she says, “I’m tired of waiting for someone to make a move. The cypher doesn’t tell me anything useful, just more damned paranoia about the local factions, and waiting for orders. So far, there’s nothing going on here that needs my skill set. And there’s nothing that should have Carter’s dander up, which means we’re not looking in the right place, or there’s just nothing to find.”

“So what’s your plan?”

She grins at Bruce. “Stir it up. I want to know if this is personal, if this is regime toppling, or if it’s just enemies pulling pigtails.”

“Rock, paper, scissors over who makes a commotion?”

“Stark. Don’t you ever learn?” She rolls her eyes, but sinks down onto the towel, and begins the process of beating Tony with every throw. She rarely indulges Tony in things like this. It’s generally a best of three that doesn’t get past two, but this one goes on for awhile. 

“Some day, Romanoff.”

“You’re all tells, Stark. And you can’t spot the difference between when I’m telegraphing lies or real intent at you.”

After three more rounds of her throwing paper while Tony sticks with rock, Bruce bursts into laughter.

Tony throws up his hands in surrender, and narrows his eyes at Bruce. “You think you can do better?”

“Wait, isn’t this how you ended up clinging to my back earlier?” Bruce always wins this game too, except when he expressly lets Tony win.

After losing a few more rounds Tony gives up, but looks between the two of them curiously. “So who wins if you play each other?”

Natasha slides down her sunglasses, and her eyes are warm. “Don't know.”

"Haven't tried." Bruce agrees.

"More of a thumb war kinda gal."

"Hmmm," and he imagines gripping her hand, stroking over her knuckles, shared throaty laughter over a false contest.

She reaches out and snags his hand, curling her fingers with his, but he opens his palm and instead counts out one two three. Rock versus Scissors. 

“Smash,” he says softly, and taps her fingers. He emulates Tony’s technique and sticks to rock. 

She throws paper, and lays her hand over his. She says, low and amused, “Got you covered.”

"Oh, just stop it, the both of you.” Tony snipes. “Also, shotgun."

~*~

Tony climbs onto the Lambretta, starts it, and then opens his mouth wide in faux shock when Natasha hands Bruce her key.

He tilts his head like he’s checking in, but she just slides onto the seat behind him, side-saddle, and wraps her hands around his waist.

“That’s not even…” Tony purses his mouth. “Safe.”

It’s perfectly safe, so little horsepower, and besides, Bruce driving isn’t a threat when the Hulk can't grab the wheel. Well, not any more than he already is, and honestly, that's no more or less volatile despite being strategically different.

Plus, she’s sunburnt around the edges, salt sore and sleepy, and the idea of pressing up against Bruce’s broad back and letting him maneuver through Havana’s busy streets is appealing. It’s not a vulnerability she’d normally offer anyone, but he’s putting himself in her hands, over and over again, and she wants to reciprocate with minimal risk.

He smells like clean sweat, traces of hair product, sun warm cotton, and Bruce. She is a little embarrassed by how very much she enjoys it, how much she likes the strength of his spine, and the way his breath flows in and out, steady under her palms.

~*~

They have dinner in a place Bruce spotted when they were shopping, a hole in the wall where there are only a couple gringos besides them, but the ropa vieja is sublime and they’re mostly left alone.

A tinny radio blares from behind the bar as they discuss in low voices the topic of knowledge: advantage versus risk, or _Shareable Intel_ versus _Future Shit to Shut the Hell up About_.

“Here’s something to consider,” Bruce scratches the edge of his eyebrow, “I bet both of you could rattle off the coordinates of where Steve Rogers is shipwrecked right now.”

Tony sets down his fork. “Well there’s a bargaining chip if we need one.”

“No,” Bruce points with his fork. “It was more of an illustration of how we need to be circumspect.”

“it won't work,” Natasha shakes her head at Tony, who’s gone calculating and grim. “Did you ever read the recovery report?”

“I did.” Bruce lays a hand on Tony’s forearm, “He was put in a medical coma so they could warm him up with a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, took days to get anything approaching normal vitals, there were concerns about gangrene in the extremities before they knew he’d pull through.”

“He _can’t just thaw_ ,” Natasha emphasizes, “unassisted he'd die.”

“I think they started developing CPR in this decade, but nowhere near what he’d need.”

“Okay, so we leave Walt Disney on ice for the future to deal with.” Tony shakes his head. “He’d be a hell of a distraction for both of them, though. I feel like we’re cancelling Christmas.”

“But is keeping Steve secret a worse sin than not telling Carter her life’s work was infiltrated by Hydra, nearly from the beginning?” Natasha says, “If we’re talking moral relativism?”

Tony ticks things off on his fingers. “Changing major moments in history - and I think we can all agree that the fall of SHIELD counts as a major moment in history - is verboten.”

Bruce snorts. “First, I think you’re mostly getting your time travel rules from Doctor Who, which fair enough, but, and I hate to be a dick here because certainly it was both dramatic and traumatic, but does it count as a major historic event?” 

“We don’t know yet, do we?” she says. “I’d say yes, but maybe it wouldn’t. Maybe Hydra’s plan ultimately doesn’t matter. Maybe if they’re driven out of early SHIELD they root somewhere more fertile, instead of spending decades wrestling with Philips and then Carter and then Fury. We don’t have a way to know.”

Tony wipes his hands down his face. “Any better ideas?”

“Actually, yes.” Natasha says, “A calculated risk. We need reinforcements. To test the water, so to speak.”

~*~

Natasha keeps an eye out for their quarry while Tony fetches drinks from the hotel bar, returning with three martini glasses, one of which is bright green.

Bruce stiffens, his voice a warning, “We talked about this, Tony.”

“I ordered martinis, I don’t know what that is.”

“But you brought it over.”

“Because I want to see what it is this time.” Tony turns to Natasha to explain, “Doesn’t matter what he orders, it goes green. Most often some kind of melonball.”

“Has this been going on the whole time?” Natasha thinks of the radio in her room, popping on at six in the morning of its own accord to share tinny strings and crackling static.

“Yes.” Bruce fists his hands in frustration, trying to breathe through it, which doesn’t seem to make a discernible difference. “I was indifferent to melon before, now I’m actively irritated.”

“It’s a cosmic joke, sarcastic melonballs,” Tony observes, “I told him that was his band name: _Sarcastic Melonballs_ \--”

“Sounds more like an album.”

“--then I decided Melonballs was his wrestler name instead.”

Natasha sips, frowns. “Is this a Grasshopper?”

“Is it minty?” Tony slurps a mouthful. “Yup, minty. Maybe Odin’s laying off the big green balls theme?”

Bruce digs his hands into his hair and clenches.

“Dammit, you keep messing up my good work.”

He jerks his head to the side to glare up at Tony, who pulls back in shock, showing his open palms in appeasement.

Natasha wraps her hand around the back of Bruce’s head, working her fingers into the curls. He closes his eyes at her touch, hands loosening and shoulders starting to lower as she kneads the muscles and delicately skates her fingernails along his scalp.

Tony swoops in to check out Bruce’s eyes as they gently blink open, glancing between the two of them with an incredulous expression. Bruce is tensing again despite her ministrations, reaching to shove Tony away, but Natasha interrupts with a quiet and deliberate, “Take a walk.”

“Sorry, I got it, I’m--”

“Both of you. Walk. Now.” Her fingers band his neck with a little shake before she lets go. “Carter’s in the lobby and she’s alone. This is our best chance.”

~*~

It’s a relief, actually, the kind that’s only started to penetrate since the Triskelion fell: sharing intel. Opening up to make a connection. 

Carter sits across from Natasha, straight-backed and sharp eyed, checking her tea leaves even though vodka might have been a more appropriate beverage for this conversation. 

Of course, Carter wouldn’t be Carter is she weren’t deeply suspicious. 

“I’m the product of a very specific training regimen,” Natasha says. “But I am not here to undermine your efforts. It’s much more complicated than that.”

“Krasnaya Komnata,” Carter’s voice is sharp. 

Natasha couches her surprise in sarcasm. “The Russians didn’t try to hide their women behind desks,” she agrees. “For all the flaws in their methodology.”

“No. Instead they chained them to their childhood beds at night like caging rabid dogs.”

It’s like flashpaper, the flare of anger instantly turning to an admiration Natasha has to conceal. The Director had retired before Natasha was recruited by SHIELD, so while she knows this woman by her impact, by the stories she’s heard from Fury and from Sharon, that’s different than squaring off with her during her rise to power. She’s a bold scrapper; no wonder Steve fell so hard. She’s probably the one who taught him how to throw punches instead of just taking them.

Carter lifts the teapot on offer, but as she fills their cups it’s not a truce but a breather between bouts.

Natasha stirs in sugar and milk, as a distraction. This version of Natasha takes milk in her tea, dulling it down. She sips, and decides she doesn’t have to continue that practice. She’s the only one who knows. 

“You’ve met my...peers,” she says, “so you know why I might be out and about here.”

Carter looks at her, assessing. “I doubt you’d call those other agents peers,” she says. “I think you’re cut from a different cloth.”

Natasha takes another sip. This is delicate, navigating not simply how much to give away, but personally what’s real, what she knows in her body compared to what she learned from files, stories. What things she has kept close, secret, even after spilling most of her secrets to the world.

“Variations on a theme,” she says finally. “Certain methods proved more reliable than others.”

“Are we bargaining now?” Carter’s mouth is set, taut and sour. “Offering your help in exchange for...what?”

It’s hard not to smile in genuine pleasure at that. Since Nick went into hiding it has been a long time since Natasha has sparred with someone on this level.

“Consider it a trade,” she says. “Mutual assistance. But you may need to suspend your disbelief.”

Carter raises a perfect eyebrow. “I doubt that will be a problem,” she says, and from anyone else it would come off as snide.

Natasha knows enough unofficial history to hear that it’s weary amusement.

~*~

“I’m going to give it a shot, though,” Howard concludes.

“Not only is this nothing I ever wanted to hear about you, much less Miss Carbonell,” Edwin pinches the already narrow bridge of his nose, “I fail to see how a...a-a-a _sex strike_ will sway her to your view on the relationship.”

“This could work.”

Howard nods at Ana, “Thank you.”

“Ana, really, don’t encourage him.”

“Everyone needs occasional courage. I will en-courage him.” Ana pats Edwin’s leg soothingly and turns shrewd eyes to Howard. “This is not an opportunity for her to change her mind, you understand. This is an opportunity for _you_ to change her mind.”

“He needs to show he’s husband material, not indulge in more pointless lover’s games.”

“Mr. Jarvis, just as there are people who cannot do and so teach, you are someone who can do, but cannot teach.”

“This isn’t a game,” Howard chimes in, “I’m dead serious.”

“Yes, I know you are.” Ana sits tall in her chair and regards Howard as if knighting him before sending him off to his death. “But can you convince Maria of this?”

~*~

“Time travel.” The disbelief doesn’t edge into mockery, but instead into curiosity. Margaret Carter has seen some things, and the way she’s keenly looking them all over she’s clearly seeing a lot of things right now that make her willing to hear them out. “But how?”

Bruce begins outlining a few of the competing theories he’s entertaining, and it’s clear Tony follows him while he’s still grounded in physics. Then he brings in threads of eastern philosophy and western theories of consciousness, and Tony looks to Natasha, at a loss.

“Of course, over the last several years I’ve had some insights that causality itself is probably nonlinear to begin with, that our notion of time is an artifact, simply another emergent property of the complexity of the brain, like self-awareness,” Bruce barrels on, noodling like a jazz solo on cosmology. He’s physically winding up, starting to pace and gesturing with a jittery energy. “Experience with vastly different states of consciousness serve to underscore the subjective nature of all observations, including that linear causality is a straight line path running in one direction only--”

Peggy walks into Bruce’s path. To his credit he sputters to a stop pretty quickly.

Natasha whispers to Tony, “How much of that did you follow?”

Tony shakes his head, “He’s his own multidisciplinary conference on this, apparently.”

“So you’re working on time travel?” Peggy asks.

“Not exactly,” Bruce scratches his neck, “it’s more of a puzzle I think about sometimes. Instead of counting sheep.”

“Lovely,” Peggy says to herself, then points a finger at Bruce with emphasis. “You must _never_ bring this up in front of Howard Stark.”

“I don’t expect it will come up in casual conver--”

“ _Never_. Do you _understand_ me?”

Bruce gives Tony a look like he’s being unfairly picked on and he’s thinking about ratting Tony out. Or maybe he’s thinking about unintended consequences and deciding Peggy has a solid point. “Fine. Yet another topic I can’t talk about.”

“You’ll live.” Peggy nods, and asides to Natasha, “Scientists: loose cannons, all of them. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.”

“You have no idea,” Natasha agrees.

“She called us cannons,” Tony teases Bruce.

“Better than bombs.”

“Speak for yourself, I’m a sex bomb.”

“As I see it,” Peggy says, when it becomes clear that they’re going to give her only the bare bones of the situation, “Your biggest challenge is to figure out how to return to your timeline.”

“Well,” Bruce says, “We’re not so sure about that. We’re not sure we’re even in our timeline. Or if we’re supposed to be keeping it on track. Or if this is just a big cosmic fuck you from a god-like alien who hates us.”

Peggy blinks, tabling her follow-up questions for now. “That does seem like a problem.”

“But it’s not our sole problem,” Natasha adds grimly, uncertain of how much to reveal. She told Carter that she was a product of the Red Room, but not that she had stepped back into a decades old assignment that she has no clear memory of, only her continued existence to prove that whatever it was she’d been directed to do, she’d accomplished.

She chooses, ultimately, to keep that to herself.

Peggy comes to a different conclusion about what the other problem is. She turns slowly to face Tony, gaze traveling up from his shoes to his hairline and back down to his eyes. She visibly gathers herself. “I must admit, I thought you were blowing smoke up Howard’s arse when you talked about family resemblances.”

“A lot of people have that reaction to things I say,” Tony sounds stricken. “Don’t feel bad, you’re in excellent company.”

“You are Maria’s son. Aren’t you?” Peggy takes a step forward, shaking her head slightly. “You’re older than either of them, that ridiculous beard, but those are her eyes, her nose. Howard’s breathtaking cockiness. Maria’s penchant for provoking statements delivered as fact.” Peggy turns to Natasha to add, “I haven’t known her very long; is it because she’s a scientist, do you think? Or do they do it to get a rise out people?”

Natasha and Bruce answer as one, “Both.”

“Hey!”

“Sometimes,” Bruce adds, “to see if you’re listening.”

“Or check if you secretly agree,” Natasha says.

“You wound me.”

“Discarded hypotheses,” Bruce ticks off, “outrageous propositions he’s only half joking about.”

“Guess who isn’t getting a huge lab coat for his birthday now, which is doubly sad because of the no return policy.”

“No internal monologue.” Natasha continues, “Self-deprecation--”

“Words can hurt too, you know--.”

“--deployed as an offensive strategy.”

“--sharper than knives.” Tony pointedly adjusts his collar. “Or thighs.”

Bruce concludes, “Don't forget boredom.”

Natasha nods vigorously, humming agreement.

Peggy folds her arms with a sigh.

~*~

Natasha lingers by the door where her delicate trap has been laid each night. She runs a thumb along the door jam.

“They never take anything,” she says, like she’s saying it to herself but Bruce knows that she’s debriefing him. “It’s a game. A warning. I don’t know. But at least now perhaps Carter can take this off her daily routine.”

Anger floods the back of his throat, jaw tightening as a wash of possessive protectiveness claws at him. He shoves it away. It’s an ugly impulse. He forces himself to unclench his hands.

“C’mere,” he says as evenly as he can, and gestures to the sofa. 

Bruce sinks into the feeling of her palm against his, listening to her voice. Feels the edgy frustration singing through him despite his efforts, feels her own distraction. They are both burnt out from sun, from exposing secrets to Peggy Carter, and there’s a surprising wash of guilt as he thinks of Steve.

He curls his fingers down, threading them through Natasha’s, and puts a halt to the whole thing. She grips his hand and tilts down her chin in mute apology.

He runs his other thumb along her hairline where the sun has brought out what looks like a dusting of cinnamon. “Freckles.”

She rubs at her forehead like she can wipe them away. There’s something deeply vulnerable about those dots, so human, and he wants to press his lips to them, more benediction than lust.

Her hand brushes his knee, and she unfolds, moves towards the suitcase, her shoulders a line of tension. She flips it open, and then visibly relaxes and starts sorting things onto the bed like she’s taking inventory again.

He comes to stand behind her, picking up a pack of cigarettes that’s too heavy, and flipping it open to reveal the camera secreted inside. He drops the pack and picks up a coin that’s too light.

“Microfilm. Or message retrieval.” She holds up the pair of white gloves with a hidden pocket. “They never look in the gloves. So foolish.”

Finally, she locates a tiny spritz bottle that looks like a perfume atomizer. She pulls the napkins from the morning before out of her bag, misting them.

They just end up with a bunch of damp paper. 

“God, this feels pointless.” She gathers up all these old-fashioned tools of spycraft and dumps them back in the suitcase. The thing is, he’d rifled through it pretty well that first night while waiting for Tony, and he doesn’t remember most of these things. Hidden compartments, maybe?

“All these hints and tests,” she continues, “volleys and running around, and I don’t even know if they want me on offense or defense, or just in reserve.”

“Which are you normally?”

“I suppose that depends upon who you ask.”

Bruce understands perspective, but he doesn’t like how she sounds when she says it. He isn’t sure what he can do to shift her mood. She isn’t looking at him. He’d like to touch her, but the depth of that temptation suggests that he should leave. Sooner rather than later, while he still has the will to do it. He moves to get his shoes. “You should sleep.” 

He stops halfway to the door because he has no resistance to the way her voice curls low and needy around his name. He glances back over his shoulder.

She’s looking down into her open suitcase. “I told you spying, assassination, they often look the same.”

He nods.

“I...whatever I did, I didn’t fail,” she says softly. “We need to be prepared for the possibility that I will need to _not fail_ again. If I do, I may not exist. If that’s how this works. I...it’s possible that Tony’s choices, the Starks...they may not be the determining factor in sending us home. I think this mission matters.”

Bruce sets his shoes down gently on the dresser next to the connecting door, and comes back over to where she’s standing. Her spine is rigid, head still bowed.

His hand hovers over her back before he gives in and presses it between her shoulder blades, sliding it down to rest in the small of her back, warm through the dress. He will not lie to Natasha, nor pretend that she was not the person she was. But neither will he allow her to forget who she has become.

“We will figure this out,” he says, “Whatever that’s gonna mean.”

She doesn’t turn to him, but he can feel the tension ease, just enough to lean into his touch. “Thank you,” she says, so softly it’s barely a whisper, and he moves his hand to rest on her waist. She reaches back to cup his cheek, a fleeting caress that leaves a lingering heat, her shoulder pressed into his chest. She fits there.

It takes everything Bruce has to stay the course when he wants to cling, when he aches to turn her in his arms so he can see her face, when he has to bite his tongue not to say _fuck it_ to all of the things holding him back; the rage, and the monster that haunts him, his own human fears.

Instead, he breathes in the scent of her skin and murmurs, “Goodnight,” and leaves.

~*~

The radio on the dresser blinks on, static and standards crooning from the speakers. Maybe there’s a short, but Natasha doesn’t think so. She unplugs the cord, and the sound fizzles. She finishes getting ready for bed, tossing her sheer robe over the chair back.

She misses the comfort of modern sleepwear, but the frilly nightclothes (demure enough to share a connecting door with one’s fake brother, seductive enough for government work) help her stay in character. This whole persona is starting to bind like ill-fitting undergarments: itchy, with support in all the wrong places.

Wearing her own shed skin is an unnecessary reminder of who she was. She’s full up on those, thank you very much. 

She’s balanced on the edge of something - not simply trying to figure out what their purpose is here, the mission, but personally, like her own decisions have unexpected weight. Portentous symbols like the matchbooks keep falling into her lap, fueling the discomfort.

The Tropicana cocktail napkin in her pocket the other night, with the coordinates to the bunker in New Jersey; the map of Europe she’d pulled out of her handbag, red stars marking the locations of SHIELD sanctioned assassinations; the Stravinsky that plays every time she turns on the radio in her room, the crackling of Arnim Zola’s tinny tyrannical ramblings punctuating the strains of _The Firebird_. Saint iconography burned onto her slice of toast. The book of Russian fairy tales in the stack of decorations in Bruce’s room.

Jabbing, petty reminders of all of the points of her personal trajectory. It’s blatant symbolism, heavy-handed communiques from a deity. Fucking gloomy Nordic swindler.

Her bed is too big. Natasha tosses and turns, throws off her covers, winds in her sheets. Tries to rid her mind of symbols and spies and her own failings, Tony’s travails, and being stuck in time. Her thoughts turn to dark eyes, bruised knuckles, the catch of Bruce’s bottom lip on his teeth before he presses his lips together, and the way that makes her feel foolish and giddy. 

There’d been a moment earlier when a brush of her arm, the least bit of encouragement might have turned the tide, filled her bed with a skittish bundle of nerves and rage and heat. 

It would have given them a mutual project to work on, moving past these tentative suggestions, these glancing touches, to a solid carnal connection. But she can’t ask him to share her bed when she’s this many other people. Between their multiple personalities, even this king mattress might not be big enough. 

The knobs of the radio blink at her. She sits up, gives in and turns the dial.

“Live for a century, learn for a century.” Odin’s Russian is as portentous and dour as his missing eye. He spouts another Russian proverb, “How well you live makes a difference, not how long.”

She replies with another proverb, “A beard doesn’t make a philosopher.”

“And the bird is known by its flight.” Odin chuckles and wishes her a hunter’s good luck, “Neither fur, nor feather, Romanoff.” 

With a wash of static the music is back, fluttering flutes and ominous strings, flourish of cymbals and horns. Stravinsky again, _Song of the Nightingale_.

Natasha knows she’s the focus of the game now: the question of what she will do, how she will handle what’s being thrown at her, what path she will take. Every option will suck in some way, take something from her, she’s being tested with at least her life at stake. He’d wished her the equivalent of breaking a leg, but she hadn’t given him the traditional reply of _to the devil_. She won’t be his straight man.

She’s also not going to share this wrinkle with Tony or Bruce. She doesn’t want to answer to the committee about what she might choose to do.

She clicks off the dial. The goddamned thing is still unplugged. She hates aliens.


	6. Odin’s Golden Oldies - Thursday, Sept. 4, 1952

### CH6 - Odin’s Golden Oldies - Thursday, Sept. 4, 1952

Natasha is drinking coffee at the small table in her suite, newspaper spread out in front of her, sun shining on her hair and her shoulders bared by her sundress. It’s a lovely image except for the incongruous spread of component parts that had been the black and gold Emerson Bakelite radio stationed next to her bed.

Tony's only comment is a low whistle. He pours coffee in the porcelain cups, hands them around. 

Bruce looks pointedly at the radio, but no explanation is forthcoming. “So then, what’s this morning’s agenda?”

Natasha holds up a heavy note card, an engraved looping C on top, the signature at the bottom a simple M. “We’ve been invited to dine with the Starks and company, and to play tennis this afternoon.”

Tony holds the coffee cup by its rim and takes the card from her hand, tapping it on the table thoughtfully.

“I assume it’s from Carter,” Natasha says, but Tony shakes his head. 

“Carbonell. They were a present from her father when she finished at Smith, the first to graduate college in the family; I get the feeling they all ate really cheaply that month to afford them.” He runs his thumb over the embossed initial, carmine red with a suggestion of a spoked wheel. “She never changed the design, it was always her personal stationery. We even had towels in one of the summer houses with the same symbol, from her bachelor apartment, I think. She couldn’t bear to throw them away.”

Bruce sits across from Natasha, tilting his head a little. “Rough night?” he asks gently, voice low, and Tony glances between the two of them.

“The heat,” she says, picking up a piece of toast and waving it around like she’s going to eat it, but instead she sighs and puts it back on the plate, buttered side down.

~*~

Peggy yanks Maria’s arm hard, but that's nothing compared to the impact of the speeding bakery van clipping her hip and sending her rolling.

She comes to a stop to the sound of Howard shouting in the distance, but everything else is very clear, very quiet, the seconds crawling as she gets to her hands and knees. The gritty pavement feels cold against them, tingling.

Time speeds up again, Peggy grabbing and tugging at her, yelling in her Army voice to get out of the street. Maria stumbles on wobbly legs onto the grass, falling to her knees again, her right leg throbbing.

“Maria,” Peggy crouches, firm hands on her face to look into her eyes, “Maria, look at me.”

Maria’s stomach flips and she hangs her head, but breakfast stays down. There’s a cool hand on her neck - Howard, more delicate than she’d have guessed he could be while rattling off confident Spanish to the people crowding around them.

They exchange a look over her head and Peggy says, “She’s hurt.”

“Hospital, we need a hospital.” Howard’s voice is cold steel.

“I’m fine,” Maria waves the both of them off, and uses Peggy’s shoulder to hoist herself up.

The heel on her shoe gives way.

The world turns a sickly black as her hip and ankle scream in protest, and then everything absurdly tilts as Howard picks her up in his arms. Her knees are aching now, a counterpoint to the throb in her leg and a shiny feeling in her palms that suggests more pain to come.

“Put me down,” she orders. “We’re making a scene.”

“We’ve already made a scene. You need a doctor.”

“I will be fine--no!” She grabs his chin and his full attention. “Don’t look at Peggy like you’re making this decision for me. The hotel must have a doctor they can call. Put me down right now.”

Howard sets her on her feet but keeps his arm around her waist to take most of her weight, and she’s okay with that, because even with Peggy marching ahead of them clearing a path to a taxi, the real pain sets in before they get back to the hotel.

~*~

Tony and Natasha pore over the intel Peggy had reluctantly supplied them the day before. Natasha has studied it already, but more eyes never hurt. Bruce leans back in the chair, opting out of running in circles for the time being.

There’s a brisk hard knock on the door.

Bruce asks, “Did we forget to pay rent?”

Natasha sweeps the papers into a manila folder labeled _Misc. Dashboard Kitsch_ , as Tony produces a pack of cards out of nowhere and starts dealing out hands.

Natasha opens the door to find Howard Stark, white as a sheet. With his coloring it's more of a ghastly grey.

“Please,” he says, peering into the room, “The hotel doctor is out on a call, we need--it’s Maria. There was an accident in the street...a delivery truck nearly killed her. Can you help?”

Tony is on his feet and Bruce is quick to follow, a hand on his shoulder.

Bruce catches Natasha’s eye, brief tense shake off his head in a helpless gesture, but she jerks her head toward the door.

“Go on, Doc,” she says, “I’ll grab your bag.”

“My suites,” Howard says, pulling the train out into the hallway at a clip.

“I’ll meet you there,” Natasha closes the door behind them and narrows her eyes at the suitcase.

~*~

Tony stops pacing. Howard's arms are clutched tightly to his chest, chin in his hand, knuckles even whiter than his pallid complexion.

“You really do love her,” he says.

Howard turns to him, cheeks flushing in a way Tony knows well, but instead of biting sarcasm there’s only a very soft, very strained, “I do, yes.”

Tony swallows. Just like that he sees the man behind the curtain, wearing a face so like his own but so young, so drawn with pain, and he thinks, _you're showing this to a virtual stranger and you never once let your own son see._

It's worse than hearing them fuck in the cabana.

Peggy comes into the sitting room, handing Howard a cup of tea.

“Ever English,” Howard teases, his charm hollow.

“I’m afraid all I’ve got is tea and sympathy.” She pats the side of his shoulder, giving his arm a little shake. “Since I gave the bourbon to Maria.”

~*~

Bruce examines Maria's ankle and palpates the flesh around her knee cap. Empathy batters him, a ghostly ache growing in his own body as he catalogs her injuries, the rawness of his current state extending to this as well. “Nothing’s broken here.” He gets a washcloth and soap, and fills the ice bucket with some water, calling from the bathroom, “Tweezers?”

“In Howard’s grooming kit, the brown leather case on the right.” There’s a catch in her voice, but a rueful smile on her face when he returns with the tweezers and a bottle of yellow Listerine.

“I’ll tell you a secret,” he picks gravel out of her palm, holding back a squeamish wince, though he's handled far more gore patching people up in far more distressing circumstances. “I wasn’t really prepared to offer medical assistance on this trip. I’m with Stark - Eddie - more as a vacation. A chance to spend time away from my day to day. See some place prettier than Paramus.”

“Me too,” Maria says, smile conspiratorial, and so very familiar that it catches at Bruce a little. All the talk of Howard’s legacy, and they have so often overlooked the sly warmth Tony inherited from this woman in front of him. That and those eyelashes, good lord, sweeping down with a smirk. “But were you more concerned with spending time in a pretty place, or making time with a pretty assistant?”

He gives her what she’s fishing for, which is close enough to the truth. “You got me,” he winks, sloshing antiseptic liberally and feeling like he's in a telenovela.

There’s a gentle knock, and Natasha walks in with a doctor’s bag that Bruce must now pretend is his. God knows where she even got it. She cuts him a break by setting it on the table and looting it herself, pulling out gauze and scissors, a little brown glass bottle, and a metal box of band-aids.

“This is ridiculous,” Maria says. “I’m just bruised, roughed up a little. Nothing serious. No worse than falling off a bicycle.”

“Weren’t you watching for traffic?” Natasha asks, guileless and concerned.

Maria’s mouth flattens, but she cocks her head instead of answering as Bruce washes the scrapes on her palms with the antiseptic rinse and reluctantly swabs the worst of the gouges with Mercurochrome. She hisses and catches herself halfway through a god’s name in vain.

He moves to her knees, which are scraped like a kid’s, but it’s the embarrassment on her face that really makes Maria look younger than her early twenties. “It’s so hot here,” she says, “I’ve forgone the stockings.”

“Hardly indecorous,” Natasha says, with genuine warmth, “local custom.”

“The nuns would be scandalized,” Maria says, and then looks around with a sigh that’s perhaps meant to be penitent but instead sounds deeply satisfied. “I suppose that ship has long sailed.”

Bruce bites back a smile, head bowed as he paints her knees burnt orange and applies band-aids.

“No,” Maria says, back on track. “The funny thing is that I looked very carefully, and I know Peggy did too. Traffic is heavy on that road and we’ve had some near misses. The truck wasn’t there, and then it was bearing down on us, not even slowing down. If it hadn’t been for Peggy…”

The full import washes over Maria’s face, and Bruce hands her the ice bucket just in time for her to vomit, coughing and wiping her mouth. He looks away quickly, hands flexing a little, face pale.

“Oh dear god,” she moans, as Natasha rubs her back and shoots Bruce an incredulous look, “I really nearly died.”

Natasha takes the bucket away, muttering as she passes Bruce, “Seriously?” She comes back with a glass of water for each of them.

~*~

“She’ll be fine,” Bruce says, and nods at Howard. “Go on in, I think she’d like to see you. A sprained ankle, some road rash and bruising, and a bad scare. But she’s resilient, and now more pissed off than scared.”

Howard gives him a strange look, but thanks him with a depth of grace that Bruce hadn’t expected, and leaves them.

Bruce is wiping his hands on his pants, still swallowing purposefully, and Natasha brushes her fingers over his knee. “You know, it’s easier to be a doctor when you don’t get woozy at the sight of blood.” 

“Blood I can handle, it’s the vomiting itself,” he says, “I mean, it’s usually not that big of a problem, but right now...I don't have any distance.”

Natasha gives a couple hitches of her diaphragm that make Bruce clench his jaw, but it’s playful, and the baleful look he gives back is almost fond.

“Can we focus?” Tony digs his nails into his palms. “Someone nearly killed my goddamned mother.”

“Say it louder, Stark,” Natasha hisses, “so everyone in the hotel can hear you.”

Peggy looks shaken herself, admitting, “I suspect they were trying to get to me, as opposed to Maria. Or else they were trying to scare Howard.”

Tony’s voice is very clipped. “We will find them, and we will make them hurt.”

“I realize you have a very personal claim,” Peggy says, suddenly steel, “but I will not allow you to take extreme measures. Whatever reason you’re here does not change my principles or my mission.”

“The last thing we want is to cause any harm,” Bruce interjects with a measured calm.

“Remembered your Hippocratic Oath, did you?”

“Cool it, _Eddie._ ” Natasha reassures Peggy, “We’re here to help if we can, not to hurt.”

Tony stalks to the other end of the veranda.

“This is getting me nowhere. If you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.” Peggy slips back into the suite.

Bruce catches Natasha’s eye, but she shakes her head. “Whatever I’d learn following her is not worth her catching me doing it, and she would, she’s hyper-vigilant right now.”

Tony stands there for a long moment, ostensibly still but nearly vibrating with contained anger. With a twitch he takes off for the door.

“I need her to keep seeing us as allies, not another risk factor she has to control for.”

“I heard you the first time, _Clara_ ,” Tony snaps, haring off somewhere.

~*~ 

Tony heads through the French doors into the sitting room of the suite at a fast clip, and gets nearly through the room before two things happen at once.

The first is that his situational awareness registers the two women in a tight clinch by the window where the curtains are drawn.

The second is that they notice him and sidestep apart, smooth like they were always just talking quietly. Peggy even pulls out a hankie and dabs her eyes as Angie pats her back comfortingly.

Then his eidetic memory kicks in and helpfully supplies a mental Polaroid of Peggy's elbow hooked around Angie's neck, wrist loose as she cradles her head in a deep kiss, Angie in turn wrapped around her like a constrictor.

Everyone in the room is frozen for a long moment.

He realizes both women are wearing the same shade of lipstick.

Peggy balls the hankie in her fist and steps in front of Angie. Tony puts his hands up and shakes his head as he backs out of the room, continuing on out into the hallway of the hotel.

~*~

“Howard.” Maria sits on the bed like a jewel set amid pillows, regal and - the doctor wasn't pulling any punches - pissed off. She’s nursing a glass from the bottle of Rare Old Fitzgerald on the nightstand, a double handful of ice cubes twisted in a pillowcase resting on her ankle. The light is dimming behind the shuttered windows, another storm rolling in.

“How are you feeling?” He sits on the side of the bed, studying her smeared eye makeup and messy hair, her air of utter self-possession.

She sips the bourbon and studies him in return. “I got hit in the fanny with a bakery truck.”

“Maria…” He swears she says outrageous things in that calm serious tone just to see if he’ll laugh, but he laughs from nerves sometimes, and he barely holds that ugly braying in check. “I’m so sorry…”

“Fitz and I have been thinking,” she begins, pouring another drink, “and we’re curious; why would you be sorry? Both you and Peggy act like this is something the two of you are responsible for.”

Howard doesn’t like where this is going, but he’s committed. Maybe he should be committed.

“Unless…” she shifts, and he hears that she’s got a rubber water bottle of ice tucked under her right hip. “There are shenanigans afoot.”

He skates his fingertips up her shin, avoiding her eyes. Even the prickle of stubble gives him a twisty feeling in his chest; he’d caught sight of her tumbling to the ground like a rag doll, sheer horror on Peggy’s face, and here she is in his bed again, just a little bruised but even farther from being his.

“Are there, Howard?” She presses gently, and it’s the tenderness there that breaks his resolve, “Are there shenanigans afoot?”

“Maria,” he crawls up the bed to sit next to her good hip, finally taking a real breath when she lets him slip his arm behind her, tuck her against him. He kisses the top of her head, thinking that he’s going to give this everything he has and, well, Peg’s forgiven him for a lot worse. Besides, she was the one who invited herself along to Havana and made this a working vacation to begin with. “I’ll tell you what you need to know…”

~*~

Bruce understands the deep visceral dread of being unable to protect someone you love from being hurt, even more so when it's your own mother. The fear, the anger and helplessness are primal. Parents and children, he thinks, following Natasha back to their rooms.

She tosses the doctor bag on her bed and goes over to the red suitcase. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes.

“Don’t we need to get that back…?”

“Yeah, not so much,” she says. Her lips move, a swift string of Russian. Then she opens up the suitcase, reaches into it and pulls out a flyer. She looks at it for a long time, then looks at him. “Do you want to come with me?”

“Um, I mean,” He’d assumed that they were working this together, whatever the hell this is, and he realizes that’s a pretty big assumption since he’s at a complete loss for what’s going on. Boris would be here as arm candy, the feint before the blow, a distraction for anyone looking at her. But that doesn’t mean that she wants or needs Bruce with her right now. “Should I not?”

She shrugs and reaches under the crinoline that fluffs up her skirt, a deadly little pistol suddenly in her hands. It takes up more of her concentration than is believable as she checks the ammo and holsters it. She smooths her skirt back down, tiny embroidered flowers and hot pink vines like bougainvillea, her blouse open at the throat and baring her arms, white canvas wedged shoes and her toenails painted coral.

He kind of loves how innocuous a picture she presents once the gun is hidden away on her thigh.

“Yes,” he says, swallowing the selfish part of himself that wants to add, _I don’t want you out there alone_. It feels territorial, the kind of chest-beating that in his real life he's long since discarded out of self-preservation. He knows her skills are impeccable, her deadly talents. But she can be so terribly isolated, and even if he’s nothing more than cover, he wants to offer what he can.

“Okay,” she says, and her smile appears as suddenly as the gun did, full of an amused warmth that's far more deadly for him than the bullets. He decides he will not be embarrassed by how much that heats him.

In the cab she hands him the flyer, a woman in a flouncy dress cut high on the leg cradling a microphone, distinctive tilted eyes and arched brows. “She was in Miami. Singing under the name Zora. There for a special engagement, arranged for her by another Russian ex-pat. Sergei was my...primary mission. I was on the bill with her, for a brief run.”

“Bill? Singing? I thought ballet was your art of choice.”

“I wouldn’t really call it singing. I stood onstage in a very tight dress and murmured a few torch songs while Bogdan played the trumpet. We were a short lived act.”

“And your mission?”

“Assess, evaluate, eliminate if necessary.” she pauses. “Although if they send me, it’s usually necessary. Sergei was...enjoying the fruits of capitalism, and Bogdan was enjoying the fruits of those fruits. In retrospect, he was just reaching, you know. Taking what seemed so obvious in front of him. I don’t remember feeling bad, though. About killing him. Sergei was easy. He wasn’t a good man, a good person. Bogdan was just...weak. Corruptible. A mistake made by the Kremlin.”

Bruce swallows, and brushes his fingers over her hand resting lightly on the seat between them. Much like the way his heart rate spiked in the face of her cold calculation, his blood burns hot at her ruthless practicality. All that strength, that will, that honest, brutal assessment of her own flaws and sins. Her ragged vulnerability, and perfect, damaged soul.

Natasha is quiet for awhile, finally saying, “Zlata’s not a spy, but she keeps company with them. Or did. Friends of friends with kopeks to spare, if you know what I mean. Zlata makes arrangements for those looking for special items.”

She hasn’t shared like this before, whether from a lack of the memories, or a lack of desire to unearth what she’s got. He wants to be worthy, stays silent to keep from saying anything stupid, wrangles the sharp, glassy pity lodged in his throat and turns it into compassion.

She stops the cab at the intersection where the accident occurred.

There are tire marks grooved deep into the road, the smell of rubber still acrid in the afternoon heat, but it’s hard to get a close look because of the traffic. Bruce doubts it would matter anyhow, and suspects she just wants to set the scene.

Natasha checks all the sight lines. “It really could have been meant for all three of them. Traffic could have altered the timing, Maria could have dawdled. Peggy’s always going to be more aware of her surroundings than a civilian, might have sensed something was wrong, sped up. Maria would just be looking for passing cars.”

Even the savviest civilian was careless. Tony was a prime example, always doing three things at once, walking down a Manhattan sidewalk with the breezy confidence that the sea of people would part for him. While they often did, Maria didn’t even have that kind of protection. Bruce feels a caustic itchy irritation just thinking about Maria’s vulnerability, and yet how determined she had been, breathing through pain, vomiting in shock, recovering with aplomb.

They continue on to the Tropicana, and enter through the back door, propped open with a metal milk crate to encourage a breeze.

It’s quiet, the nightclub splendor giving way to a worn seediness in the daylight. It smells like old rum and stale floor mats, cigarettes and sweat and kitchen grease. It smells like hard work, and dissolution. Bruce has worked in places like this, but very few of them could transform into such glory once the sun set.

They wind their way carefully through the kitchen where one man hunches over the sink scrubbing potatoes. Bruce follows Natasha’s lead, slipping in and out of the shadows until they get behind the stage. There, a large man in a short sleeved shirt sits on a stool reading the same issue of _Movie Stars Parade_ that Natasha has been spilling cyphers out of.

Doris Day looks downright disingenuous.

Natasha taps the spine of the magazine. He looks up, broad face and a moustache tinier than either of his eyebrows. “Que?”

Her mouth twitches and she replies in English, “I understand the weather in Santiago is beautiful this time of year.”

The man looks back at the magazine, replies in Spanish, “Who cares about Santiago when you live in Havana?” He sighs and takes the envelope Natasha passes him. Burying his nose in the magazine, he reaches back to twist the knob, dropping his hand and letting the door swing open on its own. The message is clear, _enter at your own risk_.

Natasha leads the way. The dressing room is the aftermath of a storm - stockings and feathers, greasepaint and silk robes, spilled powder and broken heels. There’s method to the chaos, each mess contained in a clearly delineated space, and the whole place smells like stale sweat and sun and lipstick and feet. At the end of the closest table, a solitary figure leans into the mirror, moving parts of her face around and painting them.

It takes him a minute before Bruce recognizes her as the torch singer from the first night, older than he thought, and he’s unprepared for her to greet Natasha by one of her names.

“Dobro pozhalovat' domoy, Nataliya,” the woman says. Her warm dusky skin sparkles with stage makeup, and her hair is pushed back carefully with a cotton scarf while she finishes the application.

“Zlata,” Natasha says, careful, like she’s going as much on instinct as memory. 

“You shouldn’t be here little spider.” The woman is drawing on a careful cateye with gold liner, barely glancing at Bruce. “He definitely shouldn’t be here.”

“Cafe, Zlata?” Natasha asks, “for old time’s sake?”

Zlata snorts, sets down the eyeliner and gives Bruce a hard look.

“For old times,” she echoes, “and a new Boris. How does this one take his tea, or should I even bother asking?”

Bruce is starting to feel bad for OG Boris.

“The old one couldn’t sing anyway,” Natasha dismisses this with a flick of her eyelashes. “This one likes it strong, with honey.”

He can't tell if these are codes or quips. Despite the innocuous setting, there's a strung tension, thick as the dust in sunlight, and it's radiating off Natasha.

Zlata stares at him, then back at Natasha, and finally gestures for them to follow her.

“Zlata is an ex-patriot, a refugee,” Natasha explains as they make their way along the service hallways to come out behind the club’s main bar. “A comrade.”

“Untrue little spider,” the woman walks backward to give Natasha a long look, made more intense by the outline of gold around her dark eyes. “You are a patriot, a comrade. I’m merely an exile.”

“But one who listens,” Natasha says. 

“And what is it you think I’m listening to?”

“Oh! I know this one!” a bright familiar voice pipes up from the bar, “Her better angels.”

There's a long pause and Bruce fists his hands, grateful that he's just himself right now, protective impulse or not. He knows better than to interfere. It would do no good, Natasha brought them here for a reason, and perhaps Dottie Underwood is it.

“I must say, I’m disappointed so far, Nata.” Dottie pats the bar stool next to her.

Natasha sits and Bruce hovers a few steps back behind Dottie, triangulating. Dottie spins on her seat, flashing a saucy wink at him as she passes. “Privyet, Borya--you eager beaver, you.”

Bruce looks to Natasha for guidance but her attention is focused solely on Underwood, a mongoose watching a snake.

Zlata sighs. “I suppose I’ll make tea after all.”

She gestures for Bruce to follow her back behind the bar and Natasha’s eyes flick up to him with a nod.

There’s a large urn of hot water at the end of the bar. Zlata pulls a tea pot out of the service station, fills it a little with water, swirls it around, dumps it into the sink.

“And what,” Natasha says carefully, “has you so...put out?”

It takes more control than expected not to turn and watch Natasha face off against Underwood. More than he can hide, and paradoxically that's what keeps him still, not wanting to give away that strain. That liability. He can hear the lilt of Natasha's voice is halfway between the soothing tone she uses in their sessions and something flatter that raises the hair on his arms.

“Please, malyshka, don’t play the fool. It doesn’t become you.”

“Pretend I am a fool,” she says. “Spell it out. I dislike these petty games.”

Bruce recognizes a youthful arrogance in the way she’s hitting certain words.

Underwood snorts. “Oh, they’ve taught you so well. I bet you know so many new things. Doesn’t she, Borya?”

He doesn’t turn around at the taunt. Zlata pulls a bottle of gin off the shelf, plunks it down, shakes her head.

Dottie laughs again. “I see you’ve trained him too. Good girl.”

“We’re not here to talk about that clearly, so again, spell it out for me. What has you so upset?”

Deliberately disingenuous, and he can tell she’s pushing Dottie. It reminds him of himself a little, before the accident. The faint disdain curling around each sentence, the annoyance held in check. It’s masterful, the layers she’s capable of creating, the identities she’s shifting between.

Underwood says, “Carter.”

Zlata stills. One of the bar stools creaks, and Bruce holds his breath. The name in Dottie’s mouth is full of love and fear and menace.

“Carter is fine,” Natasha emphasizes softly, as if speaking to a dim and easily upset child. The rest comes out harsher, boldly pushing through chagrin, “anyway, she was not the one startled.”

“Startled? Oh, Nata. Carter nearly dies like a dog in the street and where were you?” Dottie’s voice is still bright, but so sharp now, like a blade in the sun. “We talked about this.”

Tension wraps around Bruce’s tendons, his vocal chords. He can feel it in the muscles of his calves, the throb of torn skin and bruising across his knuckles. The nervy tingle is buzzing in his soft-palate, the balls of his feet, his testicles. The warning signs of impending change, the places where cortisol and adrenaline hit first, but he just hangs there, a burn of acid in his throat.

All they signal now is fear. His reflex toward fight or flight buzzes like a busy signal and he has no...recourse. Something’s pressed into his hand, and he looks down. A small glass, clear liquid, Zlata looking at him grim and determined. He drinks quickly, the gin adding to the burn in his throat and fuming his head with juniper.

“I was very much hoping to avoid spies.” Zlata mutters, low enough so only Bruce can hear. She hands him a metal tin, ornate filigree, a silver spoon and a strainer. The tea smells deep and earthy, chewy. “They are hell on upholstery.”

Natasha continues. “She wasn’t hurt, Dottie. I have been doing my part...taking photos, attending parties, making friends. Establishing a cover with the Americans. I am following orders. I cannot be with her every moment.” There’s a hint of placation, of defense, but a little bit of push back as well.

“Do better, Nata. Or I’ll grow weary of this. I helped ease your way.”

Bruce clenches the edge of the teapot, swirls leaves. Zlata puts cups on a tray, adds milk to a small pitcher, sugar cubes on a plate and honey in a dish. She splashes gin into two of the tea cups, mutters, “They don’t get any.”

Zlata hands Bruce the tray to bring over to the bar.

“I haven’t been assigned a new handler,” Natasha speaks as if she’s reaching for even and rational, and it’s an effort. “But that will change soon.”

“I suspect some...current dissent in the ranks will buy you time,” Dottie muses. “All the more reason to do as I asked.” 

“I cannot simply ignore orders when they come in. And I cannot protect Carter from an unknown threat.”

Underwood taps red nails on the polished bar, and then stops when she catches herself. It comes across as a genuine nervous tic. It surprises Bruce, and he pins his eyes to Zlata pouring tea. Natasha’s tics have all been feints, fronts and dares. Movements and mannerisms designed to draw a reaction. 

Even as she shifts her weight on the bar stool, leaning forward earnest and edgy, he knows it’s calculated. “You ask a lot. Too much attention paid to Carter, and they’ll grow suspicious. Handler or no, Moscow is still watching me. Plus there’s CIA, MI-6, possibly others. And Carter’s hardly sitting around playing canasta, sipping tea.” 

Bruce hands out cups, and stands off to the side, sipping his own boozy concoction. Zlata has lit a cigarette at the end of the bar.

Dottie taps her nails again.

Natasha maintains her youthful eagerness. “My orders come from deep in the Kremlin. I’m a more...specialized tool than you. The newer model, honed to a finer edge. And as of yet, no orders. No kills. Just...wait. Watch. Assess. What makes you think they want to do more than scare Carter? Scare any of them, proper motivation to push the pieces around. Even us.”

Dottie stirs the milk in her tea, lays down the spoon and gives a little.

“The Cubans are withholding information, trying to play the American factions off against the Soviets. Politics aside, what they really want are guns and training, trade goods and tourists. Neither country has a particular interest in supplying those things for free. I’ve been here, helping to strengthen their bargaining position. Zlata, my lovely, is very close to many of the movers and shakers.”

Zlata gives a very Gallic shrug. “They closed the embassy when Batista was elected, but there are still Russians running amok. Waiting, spending money. Making their presence known. They like to come here, as do all of them...Americans, the Brits and French who remain. The well-heeled Cubans too.”

“It’s a conduit, Cuba,” Bruce says, carefully. “Close enough to America that it provides a vantage point.” And his history teachers thought he hadn’t been paying attention.

“What was the Silk Road but a conduit?” Zlata burns down her cigarette with a long pull that's all about the nicotine. “The Cubans want to take advantage of that. If they can. But it’s risky to play power games with such big fish.”

Natasha waves a hand. “Those are politics. This thing with Carter seems more personal.”

Dottie raises a perfect eyebrow. “She makes even international politics feel personal. It’s her talent. And if this is politics, you need to look outside of the city. Ears to the ground, that sort of thing.”

She drinks the rest of her tea, and rises from the bar stool. “I made you an offer, baby widow. Take it seriously. I won’t give you another chance. This is your future, if you’re to have one.”

She stretches over the bar towards Zlata, who leans forward, holding the stub of her cigarette out of the way, continental kisses and hard stares, and Underwood saunters out.

When she’s gone, Zlata adds gin to Natasha’s cup.

She sips it carefully as Bruce sits down on the bar stool Dottie had occupied.

“Thanks for the warning, Zlata,” Natasha says dryly. “You really do know everyone.”

“She pays well, and she follows through on her threats. What incentive did I have to warn you?”

Natasha raises a shoulder in a _fair enough_ gesture, and taps on her lower lip, lost in thought.

Bruce is exhausted from watching all the double-talk and coded channels, Natasha infiltrating her own early self. Equally awed by her skill and certain he missed a great deal. He clears his throat. “I feel like all of that was awfully cryptic.”

Natasha’s smile is cold, brief. “Welcome to espionage.” She turns to Zlata, “You should probably look for a new gig.”

Zlata sighs and grinds out the ember of cigarette. “Yes, perhaps it’s time to explore South America again.”

~*~

Maria is shocked a few times by the dump truck of information Howard unloads that afternoon, and she can tell he’s holding a lot back even so.

_On intelligence operatives and clandestine organizations_ , “It’s the front line now, with its own casualties and ruin. But at least it’s not the meat grinder the war was.”

_On scientific research, starting during the war, and now preparing for the future_ , “It’s so important, Maria - that’s why I have this money, to bring the future here as fast as I can.”

_On Margaret E. Carter’s aggressive prank war with J. Edgar Hoover_ , “Do not offer that man a Choward’s Violet Mint, he will know you know the story, and you might never be heard from again.”

Even more shockingly, after a couple hours he finally talks himself out and gets dozy, arms wrapped around her from behind like she’s a teddy bear. Sheets of rain begin to pelt the windows, but he only tightens his embrace.

“Howard,” she nudges him and hands over the wet pillowcase.

“You need more ice?” He’s halfway off the bed, blinking. The room is dim from the storm, though it’s early evening. He’s so surprisingly earnest, so far away from sly as he looks at her, ready to spring into action. And the bottom line is that she’s done. Just as she’s stopped toeing the virginal line, and stopped wearing stockings in the subtropics, and stopped telling herself she doesn’t care for this brilliant dynamo, she stops pretending this is just an interlude in her life with no bearing on the future.

Maria shakes her head and lays it out bluntly, “I need you to help me to the bathroom, order a dinner in, and help me get into a nightie. And try not to get me back out of it right away.”

“God, Maria, you got hit by a truck, what do you think I am--”

“I said _not right away_ ,” she says, reaching for his hand as he nearly scoops her off the bed, “I listened to you; you should return the favor. I’d expect more subtlety from a spy, even just a hobbyist.”

“I’ve met some strange women.” They limp over to the bathroom. “You’re stranger.”

“Get the peach one. It’s smoother, won’t catch on my skinned knees,” Maria says, closing the door. “And you like strange people, clearly. I think that’s why you took me to Havana.”

“I took you to Havana because I like you.” He calls through the wood. “I wanna take you home because I love you.”

Maria takes a while in the bathroom, in part because she’s weighing whether she should pretend she didn’t hear that, and also because the bruise that wraps around her hip and cheek makes sitting on the toilet a breathtakingly painful enterprise.

~*~

It had rained while they were inside, and the sky is threatening to do so again, but the air is clean and smells of flowers. Natasha rolls her neck, trying to ease some of the tension. Bruce watches her carefully, and there’s a recognition on his face that soothes her. She’d like to go back to the hotel, sit in the shower and let the water wash away the girl she’d been, the one tempted and repelled by Underwood’s offer. 

For now, she takes Bruce's arm when he holds it out for her. He’s a solid, certain presence at her side, and there’s a part of her that’s just as tempted, just as repelled at the idea of giving in to this growing heat, this growing need to press against him, to take comfort and succor. To convince him to do the same. She doesn’t trust herself here, either. The giddiness of being seen by him, being known, is swaying her judgement, whispering in her ear that maybe she doesn’t have to be alone. That perhaps she could make him believe it too.

“Can we walk a little?” she asks. His forearm is corded tension, the aftermath of the meeting, of containing himself, but his breathing is controlled. He’s trying so hard. To listen. To be normal. To look like a guy on vacation. He’s had practice with this kind of hiding in plain sight, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

She strokes her fingers along his bare skin, holds his arm like a lover.

It should feel like a cover, but it makes her feel more exposed.

His mouth quirks up, amused as they stroll along the sidewalk, the sounds of traffic and the ocean banding them from both sides.

“Did you get what you were looking for?” he asks, and squeezes her hand where it grips his arm. 

“I’ve gotten more with less,” she says. While that's true, she’s starting to get the idea she’s being used, and not in a way she’d anticipated. Underwood had been antsy. More importantly, she’d shown up out of nowhere, drawing Natasha to her. And Natasha is starting to wonder if she’s the bait instead of the fish.

She’s suddenly deeply weary, and the hotel is still miles away. They’ve come so far yet haven’t gone anywhere at all, and there’s a taxi stand coming up.

“Can we?” Bruce asks, and she nods, grateful.

He holds the taxi door for her, then sits too close for the crinoline, crushing the flounce of her skirt against his thigh. She doesn’t move away. Instead, she leans her head to rest lightly on his shoulder. He takes her hand. There’s no one else to see, to interpret or judge. 

“You haven’t asked about the suitcase,” she says.

“I figure you’ll tell me.”

She smiles at that. He’s so patient, so used to not getting what he wants. It’s maddening, occasionally thrilling how much he figures out without being told.

“If you’ve got questions…” She holds that out for him, because she likes how he looks when curiosity lights up his face.

“Only one,” he says, warmly teasing, drawing her out.

She smiles against his shoulder. “Yeah,” she murmurs, “I still have the dress.”

She relishes the sound of his chuckle, the tenderness and humidity of his grip.

~*~

They get back to find Tony's set up camp in Natasha's room, turning her table into a makeshift bar. He’s slicing limes, an open bottle of Santiago de Cuba spiced rum front and center, the radio reassembled at his elbow playing rhythm and blues.

Natasha takes a seat at Tony’s other side, indicating the radio with a nod, “Has she been behaving herself now?”

Bruce pauses in the act of pulling out his chair, looking between them, unnerved by the anthropomorphization paired with casual cruelty. He thinks about the drab suit in the park, the disdain she'd shown Natasha as if she were a flashy tool prone to breaking, possibly in need of an overhaul to bring her back in line. The conclusions he's drawing tighten his throat.

She tilts her head at him, curious, and he shakes himself. It’s a goddamned radio.

Tony slides a lethal Cuba Libre at Bruce, slices of lime in a crown around the rim as if to ward off hexes. He slides a heavy cream envelope toward Natasha. “You have mail.”

She slices it open with the paring knife and reads. “Your mother would like to reschedule tennis and dinner for tomorrow night instead.”

“Can’t keep a good woman down.”

Bruce takes the note addressed to Clara, drafting-style printed letters above the simple signed M, and boggles at the strange formality and determination behind it. “I feel like I’m in an Austen film.”

“Social graces can be used as a weapon,” Tony glances at it, “but are ideally used to put people at ease; sometimes even yourself. Though she made dad write this, possibly rewrite it until it was legible. That's his _I'm spelling it out for you_ handwriting.”

Natasha digs two identical fountain pens from her handbag, checks the mechanisms and nibs, screws the barrels back on and scribbles on a sheet of hotel stationery, black and peacock blue. They both watch, fascinated, as she carefully sniffs the ink patches as they dry. She zips the pen with peacock blue ink into an inside pocket of the handbag, gets a fresh sheet of stationery, and uses the black ink to write an equally gracious response.

“I appreciate you not being my mother’s poison pen pal.”

“Safety first,” she murmurs, eyes on her penmanship.

“An Austen adaptation, then,” Bruce mutters, “ _Etiquette & Espionage_.”

Tony asks, “How did I not notice before that you’re left handed?”

“Am I?” she teases.

Bruce had clocked her dominant hand long ago, which they’ve taken into account in the calming ritual, not so much her preference, as the fact that both he and the Other Guy were constantly close-reading the humans around them.

“So here’s another piece of intelligence, gossip, what-have-you,” Tony squeezes the wedge of lime and slides the glass to Natasha. “Were you aware that Peggy’s bi?”

“Honestly, she and Rogers were two peas in a pod.” Natasha signs her note with a flourish. “Tough, morally driven, sarcastic, prone to brawling...so much common ground he never stood a chance against falling for her hard.”

“I hesitate to ask,” Bruce says to Tony, “but you found this out how?”

“Caught sight of her and Angie, kissing.” Tony takes a swig right from the bottle and proceeds to mix Bruce another drink. “Rogers...I'm glossing right over that one. Everyone’s a goddamned onion, all these secrets and layers--”

“Vulnerabilities.” Bruce lifts his finger under the rum bottle mid-pour, “That’s more than enough.”

“No one is who I thought they were.”

“They’re all human,” Natasha says.

There’s a clicking noise from the radio. Tony says, “Yeah, I upgraded the shortwave into an actual feature,” slides a switch on the side and dials in the frequency.

Natasha snaps her fingers, saying, “Paper,” as electronic notes play.

Bruce grabs her another sheet of hotel stationery.

She closes her eyes, pen poised, “Now everyone zip it.”

Tony opens his mouth to retort but the intro music stops and he plunks down in his seat like it’s musical chairs.

A synthesized woman’s voice intones a series of syllables. Natasha lays down short blocks of scrawl punctuated by numbers. The voice repeats the sequences and she writes them again with her eyes open, then listens to a third repeat while checking both lines.

Bruce thinks maybe he needs to learn Russian next. All he recognizes are the numbers, and that Natasha whispers, “Motherfucker,” as she reaches for the matchbook in her purse.

Tony looks over her notes while she folds the row of matches back and carefully selects and tears out a square of tissue paper covered in a dense grid of numbers, Cyrillic and Roman letters in a one-time pad. 

The voice continues to run through the sequence another couple times as Natasha calculates and decrypts. She’s still working when the voice signs off with the burst of music. Bruce shuts down the radio.

“This gives me a lot of context.” She does not look relieved to no longer be flying by the seat of her pants. “I was sent here to glean as much information as possible about SHIELD’s interest in Cuba; their contacts, weaknesses, agenda, methods, full sweep of anything I can learn by hook or by crook. It confirms this was a fairly standard intervention set-up.”

“Was?”

Her pen still crawls across the paper. “I’m also being held in reserve for a possible hit. All in all, nothing surprising.”

“So what, you have to wait around to see if you’re supposed to kill someone?” Tony shakes his head. “The murder isn’t bad enough, now you’re being kept in suspense, too.”

“That’s not the worst part.”

Bruce might not know Russian, but he’s seen enough hockey to decipher the name мкартер. “Your potential target is M. Carter.”

“No, this is good--" Tony snatches the paper as Natasha reaches for the heavy green glass ashtray and hotel matchbooks. “You know your mission now, and we know there wasn’t a hit after all. Peggy’s still kicking around in our time.”

Bruce sucks air through his teeth, “I’m fairly certain it doesn’t work that way, Tony.”

“You know that,” Natasha says, “or you wouldn’t be so knotted up about your mother.”

“Pshh, my existential crisis has nothing to do with your moral crisis, Romanoff. You don’t kill Peggy. Full stop.”

She looks to Bruce, and he agrees with her unspoken assertion that the world, or more frankly Odin, is a lot weirder and more cruel than Tony assumes. Infinite branches of possibility, and no way of knowing where they are, where they need to be, or how to get there. Flying blind, making the best decisions they can in the dark. Getting this official confirmation now, so close to her meeting with Underwood, feels like being pushed into a corner.

He takes the paper from Tony’s hand and crumples it into the ashtray, striking a match and sticking it into the heart of the mangled message. He tells Natasha, “We’ll figure it out.”


	7. When in a Hole, Dig Deeper - Friday, Sept. 5, 1952

### CH7 - When in a Hole, Dig Deeper - Friday, Sept. 5, 1952

Peggy stops at her room to change out of her damp clothes and disarm, throwing a few pins in her hair and tying it up to dry in a presentable shape, but she pauses for a fond look at the lump buried in the bed. Angie had promised not to wait up for her, but the disarray of the bedclothes tells a fitful story. Peggy is so very sorry to see her go, would gladly trade that pain for a simple through-and-through wound...but Peggy is also relieved that across an ocean, Angie will finally be safe.

She allows herself to step close to the bed, knowing her love sleeps like the dead once she’s out. Angie’s face first in an armful of down pillow, her soft brown hair a riot of waves, fragrant with sleep when Peggy kisses her temple.

She stops at the kitchen on the way to the pool, and the tea and pastries follow her out shortly after. It’s early, the sky still shrugging off the night in the west, but Howard is already swimming. She counts laps, going over her notes with a keen focus honed by frustration.

A night of chats and meetings, pressing her contacts hard, following a winding trail from casino to warehouse to villa to bar and back again, and she still has nothing about what happened to Maria, no answers except yet another dangerous set of men to meet with that evening. Sleep would be a better idea, but she wants to bounce some of it off Howard first. Perhaps she also wants to steel herself against the temptation in her room of slipping into a comfort that will soon leave her anyway. She pours more tea, noting that he’s still flinging himself back and forth through the water with his terrible but determined form.

She wonders why he’s out in here in the dawn himself, the pool undoubtedly chilly from so much rain the night before.

The hotel proprietor brings out a tray, solicitous of his high-powered guest and maybe a skosh concerned, but the hot breakfast drags Howard out of the pool with a congenial smile.

Peggy lets him tuck into his eggs and get a cup of coffee in before she asks after Maria. There’s a soft glimmer in his eyes at the thought of her, a pause before he says, “She’s peachy.”

“Peachy?” Peggy steals a rasher of his bacon.

“Yes, peachy.” He twirls his fork. “Sweet and velvety, lusciously ripe--”

“That’s enough--”

“--tart to make the mouth water, shaped like sin itself--”

“Indeed more than enough!”

“--and inside a foundation of stone that’ll crack your teeth if you aren’t careful.”

“So I shouldn’t worry about Maria, then.”

“Oh no, you should worry about Maria.” Howard chuckles and pours more coffee. “She brought up an interesting question last night.”

“I don’t have the patience right now for either your riddles or your dirty poetry Howard.”

“Long night?”

“And not much to show for it but more digging to do.” Peggy fills him in, weaving in some of the intelligence she’s gotten from Clara without naming her as a source. It was also a night full of irritations, the bars and casinos far more so than the docks, and she shares those as well.

Howard even pours her another cup of tea.

“This whole place is overrun by tourists and raving dipsomaniacs,” Peggy carps, adding, “no offense.”

He straightens up, “I wasn’t offended until that last bit.”

She waves this off, sipping.

“Clara did code work during the war. As did Eddie Stark, apparently.” Howard says, “Which they both let slip to Maria within days of meeting her.”

Bloody amateurs. Peggy passes them off as contacts put in place by the home office, “You know Rose and Katherine would never put me in harm’s way, they’re fully vetted.”

“I trust you, Peg. And you may trust the professional opinion of Miss Roberts and Mrs. Fury, but I’m not impressed with the new hires’ ability to keep their traps shut.”

“Neither am I, frankly.” Peggy steals the last of his bacon.

“I told her I loved her, Peg.”

Peggy’s face is a study in shocked incredulity. She even sets her cup down on the saucer. “Do you mean to imply that you have chased this young woman around Manhattan, winkled yourself into her good graces, flown her to Havana for Pete’s sake, and this is the first time you’ve declared your feelings?”

“Listen,” Howard looks offended, “I might tease and joke around, but I don’t lie to women to get them to sleep with me.”

Peggy acknowledges this with a reluctant flick of her eyebrows. “And yet they were lining up until six months ago.”

“And what happened six months ago?” He answers his own question, “I got Miss Carbonell to have dinner with me. I should have known back then I was in over my head.”

“What did she say?”

Now he looks constipated. “She ignored me. My timing may not have been the best.”

Peggy closes her eyes, and Howard forestalls any number of even less flattering assumptions by telling the truth.

“I shouted it through the bathroom door. There was a long pause and then she flushed.”

Peggy plants an elbow on the table and rests her forehead in her hand. “I do not have time for this, Howard. Were you able to make anything of the number station intercept?”

“One time pad, Peg. Even more hopeless than my love life.”

“Your love life is not hopeless. You are. Maria could pull the both of you out of this tailspin if she chooses too.” Peggy determinedly drinks her tea. “God help her.”

Howard stirs his coffee, pensive. “I wasn’t happy making this a working vacation, being part of your cover for being here. I’m sorry, Peggy. I’m glad you’re here.”

“Howard, I’m so sorry Maria got hurt.”

He traces his fingers along a pattern in the tablecloth. “About that…”

“I feel terrible about it, they were undoubtedly aiming for me.”

“Peg, knock it off already. You and I...Maria figured it out, that we felt responsible. Guilty.” He sits up straight in the chair. “I told her about SHIELD.”

Peggy blinks so slowly Howard’s certain she’s hiding rolling her eyes. “Did you shout _that_ through the door, too?”

~*~

“With Mrs. Danvers dead,” Bruce refers to the severe Soviet woman from the park as he doles out more American style coffee for all of them, “what contacts do you have left?”

“None that I know of, just bag boys and sympathizers. Zlata’s likely in Peru by now.” Natasha is wearing the sleeveless white cotton shirt and high-waisted blue shorts that Bruce thinks of as the Doris Day outfit, something wholesome to garden in. She and Tony sit cross-legged side by side on the bed. She fiddles with a notepad, pencil and matchbox, while Tony doodles in the order book propped on his knee.

Bruce scrubs at his eyes, which feel coated in sand. Sleep had been elusive. The dark circles under Tony’s eyes, and Natasha’s pale face suggest they also suffer from it. They’d agreed to regroup this morning but so far, the mood hasn’t brightened any.

Bruce sits at the table, where one could actually do work, but he’s busy concentrating on his breath; make the soft wind sound of it in his throat as long and even as he can. Inhale from deep in the belly, relax to exhale.

Tony clicks his tongue, “Your days of frolicking as Boris and Natasha are over, alas.”

Natasha blinks slowly as if gathering her own strength. “I’ll grant you that one, if you agree that you two,” she points her pencil for emphasis at Bruce and then Tony, “are Moose and Squirrel.”

“Sqvuirrel,” Tony corrects offhandedly in a hideous Cold War Russki accent, intent on his work.

“No,” she circles back, “I’m on my own for now, until I hear otherwise. I didn’t have close oversight in general, though usually a more straightforward set of goals. Being set up in a hotel with a short-term cover is not ideal for any kind of deep reconnaissance; that’s better suited for surgical strikes. Though maybe it’s scouting for an infiltration op stateside.”

“That leaves a lot of players still on the board, including an Asgardian A-hole,” Tony says, “and still no clear game.”

“Aside from possibly taking out Peggy Carter.” Natasha peers over, “What are you trying to draw? It looks like a raccoon.”

“That’s his glasses.” Tony tilts the pencil to shade. “Bolas de Melão, the alter-ego of Dr. Bunsen Honeydew over there.”

Natasha tries for solemn, but fails, the smile absent from her face but audible in her voice, “Is that a cape?”

“It’s the tattered remains of my dignity,” Bruce says on an exhale, but something inside loosens, and the breath comes from deeper down, comes easier. “Or possibly my shirt.”

“He needs an origin story.”

“We can’t just use his _actual_ origin story?”

“Please don’t.”

She shares a smile with Bruce, then sobers. “The fact remains, I did not fail my mission. I must have eliminated Margaret Carter as ordered.” Natasha looks defeated, but still struggling. “There was no scope for independent action, not at this point in time. I was a fine instrument; but I was a scalpel, not a pen.”

“They want Carter’s nose out of Cuba.” Tony says. “That’s the ultimate goal. Maybe she gets distracted, other priorities pop up, and SHIELD leaves Cuba to the tender mercies of the CIA.”

There’s a long pause as Natasha ponders. “What could possibly distract her from Cuba while she’s _in_ Cuba?”

Tony puts his pencil down with a weary sigh. “She loses Angie.”

Bruce fails to start his next inhale, unnerved as Natasha mulls this suggestion over.

She finally shakes her head, “No. I can’t do that.”

“What do you--?” Tony clenches his fists, then digs the heel of his hand into the knot of scar tissue where the arc reactor used to live, swinging his look of horror to Bruce. “You, too? Did you both just calmly listen to me and infer that I meant murdering Angie Martinelli and then _think about it?_ This is the worst fucking vacation ever, being stuck between you two and your acid flashback personalities. Christ. _No_. Angie goes to London in late ‘52. Peggy didn’t follow.”

Natasha rolls to her feet, tucking the notepad under her arm, stashing the rest in her pockets. “This might be when they break it off, then.”

“Or fight about it, maybe.” Tony is now alone on the bed with his cup of coffee and book of doodles. “They remained friends, but Angie had a steady career in London and Peg had one in the US, and the early fifties was not the time to romantically pursue a girlfriend if you were a woman who wanted to work, well, in a lot of fields, but a director-level government position with a high security clearance? It wouldn’t matter how much dirt she had on Hoover. And that’s aside from said girlfriend doing experimental theatre and bloody cult films.”

“Cult films, wait…” Bruce gapes as the penny drops, “ _That’s_ where I know her from!”

Tony nods. “Her stage name was Angel Martelli. She did some Shakespeare, too, versatile and tough to typecast. But yeah, you’re thinking of the horror flicks.”

“She did like three or four of those _Elizabeth of Bathory_ films, opposite Christopher Lee, just…”

“Early sixties lesbian bloodplay kink. Yep.”

“Excellent.” Natasha heads to her own room, her face unreadable but the opposite of blank, “Operation Heartbreak is a go, then.”

Bruce considers following her through the connecting door, which she’s left open. It sounds like she’s puttering with the suitcase again, sorting through whatever equipment has appeared and disappeared like the liquid in his cup, which is no longer coffee but strong matcha. He wants to go talk to her, more to the point he wants to go touch her, give her whatever he can to shore up that exhaustion, ease his own. It’s the selfishness that catches him, helps him stay rooted at the table.

Tony breaks into his reverie. “Fuck _me_.”

Bruce inquires with a weariness he doesn’t even try to hide as he leans back in the chair, shoving his fists into his pockets. “What now?”

“Everyone’s in a sex farce,” he sweeps a hand from Bruce to the doorway, as if underlining the obvious. Perhaps he is painfully obvious at this point, this longing another shattered bastion of control. “Every last one of you poor fucks, except me. And yet, I’m Tony Stark.”

“You know,” Bruce presses his lips together but can’t help himself, “that’s still up in the air.”

“Way to be supportive, Hank.” Tony tosses the book onto the side table and shoves his bare feet into his deck shoes. They’ve both decided to go without rather than wear sock suspenders just under each knee. “But really, I used to be the avatar of naughty hijinks and emotional constipation. Now I…” he flings his hands outward, then lets them fall to his sides with a short sharp sigh.

“You have someone to come home to.”

Tony snaps his fingers and wags one at Bruce, “The problem with that, my friend? Is getting back home.” He snags his hotel key and wallet, and heads out.

Bruce swirls the dregs of matcha in his cup.

~*~

Tony exits the elevator at a clip, and nearly runs into Angie and Peggy in the lobby.

He can still picture the curl of Peggy’s wrist as she cradled Angie’s neck in the crook of her arm and leaned into the kiss, and he fucking _blushes_ like he isn’t the oldest person in this ludicrous sex farce he’s found himself in…

...not counting Natasha - who doesn’t count because reasons - and he’s actually not sure about Bruce; they’re more peers than anything - and now he’s rambling in his own head, but Natasha will be proud that he’s at least not breaking character out loud.

No one is stopping, though they’re all slowing down in a kind of stand-off to see if anyone will say boo about anything. Angie has a tiny smirk at the corner of her mouth.

Peggy lifts her chin and greets him curtly, “Eddie.”

“Peggy,” Tony nods, “Angie.”

As they pass, Angie greets him with a wink, “Pervert.”

Part of Tony is relieved to hear it.

He comes across Ana shortly after. She catches his elbow in her warm slim hand and slows him back down to a stroll. “We are going out to play tourist, see the Cathedral, perhaps spy on Mr. Hemingway, drink rum from coconuts, and give Mr. Stark a little space…”

Tony had never realized what a wicked grin she could have, but maybe she never unleashed this version on little boys, no matter how precocious. “I’m not sure I want to know what he’s going to do with all that space.”

She laughs. “Mr. Jarvis and I wondered if you and Hank and Miss Clara would like to come with us. I think he’s hoping that she’ll let him borrow that lovely camera, but is too polite to ask.”

Tony can’t help returning her grin, “Anything.”

They cram into the backseat of Howard’s rented roadster, the Jarvises in front.

The scarf around Natasha’s hair whips in the wind and keeps hitting his face, so he elbows her further into Bruce and leans forward.

Ana’s hand is resting gently on her husband’s thigh, nothing salacious, just this casual intimacy as her thumb circumnavigates the outer bump of his kneecap and she points out the streets and turns with half-spoken words and little scritches. 

All his years of debauchery, and he’d never much thought about the Jarvises having sex. Their formal, courtly manners had always seemed warm but chaste, but now he sees their affection is extremely private but no less erotic. Privacy had never been part of sex for Tony until very recently; he’d been sixteen the first time his bare ass had wound up on national television. It was Pepper’s desire to not be seen as the woman who’d fucked her way to the top that had spurred him into a protective streak, working to keep the paparazzi from private moments, to take more care in his public appearances, to rein in his usual verbal flamboyance when asked about his love life and decline to comment about Ms. Potts. To finally treat his relationship, and the woman he shares it with, as something intimate just between the two of them. 

He sees now in Ana’s knowing smile, her touch like a secret language, that the Jarvises had never been sexless, only scrupulously private. Lovers who had valued the intimacy of shared words and shared pillows, comforted by formalities that were abandoned only when completely alone.

Tony feels a hit of shame. As a child, he’d assumed they were loving automatons, and he’d loved them in turn like he later loved his robots. Possibly even more. It is strangely freeing to learn he’d been wrong.

~*~

Bruce is surprised to see the camera in Ana’s hands, not Jarvis’. She holds it up to her eye, lens focused out on the sea from the top of the Castillo San Salvador de la Punta. The steps up the ancient fortress wall had been crumbling, but Ana had insisted on climbing to the top.

There are boats out in the harbor, he thinks maybe that’s what’s captured her eye, but she puts down the camera without taking a picture.

“I was just wondering what it would have been like,” she says, “to have stood here and waited for the Spanish. To have defended the bay.”

He can see in her bright speculation the woman who instilled a sense of play in inquisitive, ebullient Tony Stark. Bruce imagines castles and cathedrals spun over the low-slung magnificence of Malibu, Tony with a toy lance in hand. Or maybe a real one, knowing the Starks.

He looks out to sea, and the outline of sails isn’t hard to envision.

“Ana?”

Jarvis calls her name from far below, and Bruce looks over the half wall, as does Ana, who waves.

“Darling,” Jarvis says, holding his hand to his Panama hat to keep it from blowing away, “Are you ready to come down so that we can visit the Cathedral, perhaps get some lunch?”

Her face is open and adoring as she nods. She raises her camera again, points to Bruce to stand by the crumbling wall with the sea at his back.

He doesn’t want to tell her no, and it’s Natasha’s camera anyway, if the film survives, they’ll be the only ones to see it. He feels self-conscious, but he raises his eyes and meets the camera lens head on, and doesn’t shrink from the shutter’s click.

Ana gives him a speculative look as she lowers the lens and allows Bruce to lead her down the stairs.

~*~

Next is the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Immaculate Conception, which Tony would like to think is coincidence and not commentary.

Natasha sits in the second row of pews and looks up at the altar. Tony saw Bruce lighting a candle in the back. He’s not sure what significance it has for him, other than hedging his bets.

He remembers pieces of prayers and responses, even if Maria had been lax about them attending Mass outside of visiting her side of the family. Her rosary had come out for funerals, but in the main his parents had settled their religious differences in a mutual practical agnosticism.

Still, he’s not going to risk dipping his fingers into the holy water.

He slips into the pew next to Natasha. The missal lies open on her lap, and her fingers worry at the grosgrain ribbon bookmark. “Any unexpected visitors?” 

She turns to the front flyleaves and plucks the onion skin cypher page that had been layered over the Our Father, slipping it into her bag.

“How did you even…” he starts, but she’s looking straight ahead and her jaw is tight. She closes the book, and traces the title on the cover, _Misal Romano_ , the gold lettering worn off to make the first word _Ms_.

He sighs and goes back to watching Ana and Jarvis talk in front of a statue of Mary, Ana pointing out details on the finely embroidered satin robes. He tilts his head at her, following her gesture.

“They’re a team,” he says softly. “Listening to each other, anticipating needs. I guess I remember that, but I never really…understood what I was seeing.”

“There’s a surprising amount of romance in that idea, isn’t there?” Her voice is low, appropriate for the space, but thoughtful too. “Being known.”

“Yeah,” Tony says, “there is.”

~*~

Maria opts out of that night’s trip to the casino, wishing the Jarvises and Angie and Peggy good luck, and waving away their solicitous concern. She can’t convince Howard to go without her, so when they’re alone she tells him flat out; the evening dresses she brought all require a tight girdle, stockings, high heels. Her hip is sore, her scabby knees bound to snag the delicate silk and show through besides.

“I’d be terrible company, but that’s no reason for you to miss out. You should go. I can be less fancy on my own.”

Howard shakes his head, quiet, and then disappears. Maria eases herself into a warm bath and soaks her bruises, reading the novel she’d packed for the plane. She’d spent the trip talking with Howard instead, sitting up in the co-pilot seat as he flew, so she has most of the book left. She doesn’t expect him back until late, so she’s still in the tub when he shows up less than an hour later in a light linen suit and Cheshire cat smile.

He offers a hand, but she refuses the assistance. “One good splash and that suit’s a mess.”

“Then make me a mess, I dare you,” he says, but he grabs the towel instead as she gets herself out of the water. He tells her to get ready for a light evening’s entertainment in whatever she feels up to wearing.

She puts on a sky blue sundress, brushed cotton with black piping around the bust line, fitted but not requiring the foundation of a girdle. They’d picked the dress out together back in New York, and it works so well with his bright tie she suspects he bought it to match her.

It’s acceptable as evening wear for someplace casual, and she’s comfortable. Even sore and stiff she feels lovely somehow, desirable, testing these waters with him. She slips on a pair of low espadrilles, puts an extra swipe of eyeliner on for the sake of evening, and ties back her hair. The ends are still curly and damp from the bath, brushing the back of her neck.

He offers his arm and she slips her hand around his elbow, and there’s a jolt of warmth that runs through her -- not simply the welcome solidity of Howard under her fingers, but the stability of him. Of this.

Maria suddenly can foresee, in a different way than before, what it might be like to go through life as his permanent companion. As his wife. She needs to figure out if that warm thrill is because it feels illicit and tempting, or because it feels right. She’s leaning toward it feeling right.

When they reach the lobby, Maria changes her mind.

~*~

Tony knows showgirls, even translated to fifties Havana. Tall, dancer’s legs wrapped in fishnets, spangles banding their lush bodies, feathers in their hair. He supposes one doesn’t really have to be a connoisseur to recognize them, even if this version wears more skin-toned tulle to simulate the bare flesh that would be on display in his time.

However, he’s pretty sure that the last time he checked, this hotel did not employ any.

Romanoff and Bruce have fled upstairs, but Tony’s stymied by the host of dancers in the lobby, waylaid by a pair of smiling cigarette girls herding him toward the dining room and the ballroom. A band is tuning up, congas rumbling like racing engines gunning at the starting line.

~*~

Maria reaches for patience, and finds that it’s far beyond her fingertips.

Stepping out with Howard has been an education, the ease with which the world accommodates him because of his money and influence, and to be fair also because of his charm. He’s appreciative, and he tips exceedingly well, but even the son of immigrant grocers is bound to take this kind of thing for granted after so many years as a multi-millionaire.

Maria takes in this roomful of people, waiters and performers booked at the last minute, a buffet table being laid out to one side, the band warming up even as workers still plug in stage lights, and the only thing she sees is all this work being done, all the arrangements and details and people rushing into costumes or maybe just rushing to a different location. He may have simply emptied out a nightclub, bringing the party to her when she couldn’t go to it herself...all of this because one man made a few phone calls and everyone scrambled.

Probably happy to, knowing how he tips. And she’s supposed to limp about in her sundress and enjoy the spectacle he’s wrought, and in a way, he will have bought her smiles as well, bending the world around her in order to bend her.

Maria slips her hand from his arm and takes a step back.

Howard misreads it as hesitation, but his reach falters when he turns to see her face. “Wait, are you angry?”

“Howard…” She’s livid, but she’s extremely aware that Howard Stark is a proud man with a great deal of power, and this situation could go very badly for her. That’s the crux of it, really. He can bend the world for her, but will _he_ bend for her? Or are they simply dickering over how expensive she will be?

“Oh, you’re _pissed_.” His head darts back on his neck, surprise and reflex. He shoves his hands in his pockets like he’s putting them away, and his head cranes forward again as he asks, “Why are you pissed?’

He sounds more curious than anything, as if he got a weird result and needs more data. He steps in front of her, and it’s like everyone else has disappeared for him. She crosses her arms, remembering a snide comment she’d gotten in college about how much she gestured when she was upset. “Look at this. All of this, at your beck and call. Why?”

“I wanted you to have a good time. You could come down here in your bathrobe if you wanted.”

She closes her eyes for a moment, opens them as she says, “I didn’t ask for this. I _wouldn’t_ ask for this.”

“You deser--”

“Howard, you gave me a bouquet of _people_.” Her arms have flown out of their own accord, sweeping and jabbing. “For what, to cheer me up? All this chaos so I’ll smile even though I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck? Because I have been hit by a truck, Mr. Stark, and nothing is going to fix that until I heal, and no amount of money or influence is going to get me to pretend otherwise, because luckily I’m not on your payroll and I don’t have mouths to feed. And I’m gonna be pissed if I wanna be pissed, and I’m gonna sulk when I feel like it and hang out in my bathrobe in my room like a civilized person and not pay the world to pretend it’s fine.”

He’s gone so pale he looks like he’s going to throw up. Maria tucks her arms back under her bust and feels about to cry, so she turns on her heel and heads to the elevator. It’s open when she gets there, the button for her floor already lit when she steps inside. It’s only when a sob sneaks out that she sees Eddie’s with her. 

“Oh great,” she sweeps her cheek, voice warbling even as she tries for light, “another Stark with a wallet for a heart. You probably try to buy affection with cars and fuzzy dice.”

Eddie suddenly looks worse than the night they took the photos.

“I’m sorry,” Maria feels her face crumple, hiding it with her hand. “Sometimes I confuse mean with funny. I’m sorry, I’m really so--”

“Oh my god, you idiot, come here.”

Eddie must have stopped the elevator, because she realizes she’s been sobbing into his jacket for a while when he says, “For the record, he’s an idiot too. Arguably a bigger one, obviously genetic, trust me. Two crazy kids crazy for each other making each other crazy.” He’s rubbing her back and the way he’s muttering sounds more like he’s talking to himself. “How is this my life, explaining this? But damn it, you’re both geniuses with no idea how this is supposed to work. You’ve got to make prototypes, you’ve got to beta. You’ve got to be willing to test to failure and then rebuild.”

Eddie brushes her temples, freeing the hair stuck to her skin from tears and blowing the strands dry before smoothing them down. It’s something her mother did when she’d cry, and that memory brings another wave. She has never felt as far from family as she does right now, sobbing in a foreign hotel elevator about her _affaire de coeur_ gone wrong.

“This was a big stupid gesture because he loves you and he wants you to love him--but it’s clueless and borderline creepy, and you were right to stomp on it.” Eddie’s chest hitches with a mirthless laugh. “I’ve been stomped on by the best, so I can say with authority that he’ll live.”

Maria composes herself and pulls away, taking the handkerchief Eddie offers. Her eyeliner has smeared onto his jacket, but he waves away her attempt to wipe it, giving her an odd smile, a fan of crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“You were wrong about one thing.” He presses some buttons and the elevator moves again. “it wasn’t a car.” 

“I really am sorry--”

“It was fruit. And she was really mean.”

Maria is ruining his handkerchief now, the rest of her makeup sliding off from sweat and tears. “Who could be mean about fruit?”

“Delicious strawberries, sun-drenched, you could smell them, mouthwatering.” Eddie shrugs. “The one thing she’s allergic to. She was righteous in her anger.”

She can’t help but laugh, and he walks her to the door of the suite.

“It’s not about the fruit, or the...parties. It’s about someone doing the work to know you.” Eddie shoves his hands in his pockets, and bites his lip so the whiskers underneath bristle outward in thought. The Stark resemblance makes her head hurt. “He’ll do the work now.”

~*~

Bruce is laying on the floor of the sitting room when Tony comes in. Romanoff is curled into the couch, leaning over the arm of it and grinning down at him. They are wrapped up in each other despite the careful space been them.

“I can't believe you didn't realize it was that Saturday, don't they have signs all over the school?”

“Probably,” he agrees, “but I didn't pay attention to that stuff, you know. I was trying to convince the counselor I was okay, so she'd sign off on me leaving campus for half the day to take college credits the next year. So I was making an effort to be social.”

“By asking your lab partner out on a study date on prom night.”

“She took great notes...and by the time she mentioned a dress it was too late to back out.”

“She played you.”

“Yes she did. But it was fun to do that whole stupid thing with a friend. Play dress up, drink in the parking lot and dance.”

They notice him then, smiles dimming when they see his face.

Tony nearly walks back out. He woke up dying in a cave and didn’t feel as inside out as he does at this moment, still raw from the brutality of love and insight, his mother’s tears and snot and mascara still damp on his lapel. He misses Pepper fiercely, wishes Rhodey were here, these decades-old friendships that have secured and buoyed him. That he has jeopardized, and yet somehow sustained.

Instead, he’s here with these two bruised and battered disasters, their horrors contained but simmering under the surface, mutual longing shrouding their features. He wonders that they don’t see it in each other, but then what experience have they had in seeing someone gaze at them with quiet understanding? Christ, he never expected to bear witness to either of them exploring their humanity, much less with each other.

He owes Rhodey a fruit basket or something.

It should bring him vicarious pleasure, but he’s weary with it. He rubs at his sternum and turns to go when Bruce sits up and asks, “Tony?”

It’s the sharp concern that stills him.

Romanoff is standing by the time he turns back around, that lightness gone from her pretty face. She’s intent, focused on him. He winces at her gaze, but he’s really really tired of the unspoken, of the hidden.

“I just talked my mom down from the ledge, or I guess _a ledge_ , or maybe _onto_ a ledge. It involved saying that my dad wasn’t an asshole. Or that he is, was, but he meant well. I need a whole lot of non-metaphorical talk and maybe a pint glass of bourbon. Also, someone needs to check on the hell freezing over thing. Circumstances are optimal for that.”

Bruce is on his feet now, hand wrapped solidly around Tony’s arm. Bruce isn’t much for random touch and the gesture wilts Tony. He puts his hand on Bruce’s shoulder.

“C’mon.” Bruce steers him into the chair and loosens the knot of Tony’s tie.

Natasha places a drink in his hand and kicks the ottoman over for his feet.

They both lean in but he waves them off, “I’m not going to faint, Jesus.” He takes a steadying swallow of rum and gives them an offhand overview of his elevator ride from the lobby.

~*~

Tony had asked for non-metaphorical discussion, and after his story the mood shifts. Many of the questions they’ve been avoiding now seem desperately relevant.

“Are we failing to ask the obvious, in our efforts to not change history?” Natasha sighs, “What if we don’t go back? What if we stay here?”

Bruce shares the settee with Natasha, both leaning against opposite ends. Her feet are bare, legs stretched out, and she presses her bony ankle against his knee. He lets his hand fall open to cover it, thumb rubbing the hollow between her ankle and heel. She feels the touch run up her leg. “Would it mean you take over as your replacement? What does that look like?”

“In 1952? Well I’d just gotten started, so there’s a whole mess of havoc I don’t wreak. But they wouldn’t let me live.” She pauses, tries to analyze and not react. “They’d hunt me down, and while I’m good at what I do--”

“No one better,” Stark interrupts. She takes the compliment as given.

“I’d be on the run from a major superpower for the rest of my life,” she says, “however long or short that might be.”

“Would you do it, anyway? If you had a choice?” Bruce’s mouth is tight, like he wants to admit to something but thinks he shouldn’t.

“Would you?” She throws it back at him, lazy and almost teasing.

“No. We lose,” Tony sits up, anger making bands of tension in his neck. “Natasha, you might take the long way home; but Bruce, if you stay here we lose. Early, and often. You’re not replacing yourself, anyway; you don’t have a place here.”

“Tony,” Natasha says, “don’t. This isn’t about--”

“I’m not a threat to anyone but myself here,” Bruce leans forward, gripping her ankle. His teeth are gritted. “I stay in this time, Tony, and I can’t hurt anyone. Not like--”

“Don’t need to be a fucking tank to do damage, big guy.”

“Do you really think I don’t know that?” There’s a thread of anguish as Bruce continues, desperate to be understood, “That I don’t know how much damage humans can do to each other? But you just don’t get it. If he’s gone, absorbed, fuck if he’s simply a part of me, I’m still human, I could have…” His eyes stray to Natasha’s and lock, and what she sees there feels like a gut punch. Everything they’ve been so careful not to say, laid out plain as day...no longer deniable.

She could reach out, soothe him; but they don’t lie to each other, and she thinks right now it would feel like she was trying to.

He looks down, knuckles white where he’s gripping her foot and he lets go like he’s been burned.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I need to…” 

He pushes off the couch, and is out the door before either of them can stop him.

Her ears are ringing with the slam of the door, the tension in the room, and she just stares at the red finger marks where his hand was, where she wishes it were still.

“Romanoff. Natasha.”

Fuck, Stark’s been saying her name. She looks at him. He swallows hard, gestures.

“You gonna chase that?”

Her mouth curls up at the side, she can’t help it. Shakes her head. “Maybe we all need a little space.”

Stark licks at his bottom lip, presses his palms together. “If I give you some advice, can we pretend that I didn’t?”

She does laugh at that. “What advice can you possibly give me, Stark?”

He rests his chin on his steepled fingers, waffles, but resolve hits him fast and sharp and he cocks his head to look at her, serious and a little pissy.

“He’s gonna say no. Even with all that flouncing off, and the angst and the longing. He’s gonna say no.”

This isn’t news. “I know.” 

Tony leans back, pinches the bridge of his nose. “The secret is you can’t let him say no.”

“I’m not interested in coercion, Stark. Or manipulation.”

He shakes his head, “Not like that, we both know that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s just...you’re working with an ingrained concept of _I don’t deserve this_. It’s his personal law of thermodynamics. A body in motion will not get to motion with another body because of disaster. But that’s bullshit, and we all know it.”

“Self-flagellation,” she says.

“But not in the fun way.”

Stark does have insight here, whether she’s ready to hear it or not, think of it or not. 

Because she can’t really shake it, not after Bruce put that idea out there in the universe. Said it out loud, _I could have_. Longing, such longing, and she feels it sting in her fingertips and her knees, between her thighs, in her lungs. Longing. Before, she could just let that warm buzz of desire ride under her skin, this funny and unexpected little gift, this daring frisson between them. Mutual pining with no specified outlet.

They were both artists at denial. But now, there’s no taking back that he’s thought about transforming that want into something real. It’s unleashed possibility in her bones, and she’s not sure she can lock that back up.

And here’s fucking Tony Stark, a guidebook, trying to show her the route up and over the roadblock… But then he's always scaled Banner’s objections like a goat hopping up a cliff face. All she has to do is listen. The question becomes, _can she?_

“Don’t let him say no,” Stark repeats. “Convince him that the only answer is yes.”

~*~

Peggy tilts her glass to clink against Bruce’s

The bartender is a discreet distance away, but Bruce knows enough to be circumspect when she says, “Romantic troubles?”

He shrugs and lets it stand as something that simple. “You?”

She shrugs in answer.

“A philosophical divide,” he says finally, and Peggy gives a low, rich, bitter laugh.

“To philosophy then,” she says.

It’s after she’s called a bottle over and they’ve tested out their companionable silence for awhile that she asks, “Which one is it?”

“I’m sorry?”

Her eyes narrow, catlike. “Angie calls you The Paramus Three. She’s drawn several diagrams of how it might be playing out between you all; it’s been quite the learning exercise for Maria. But I think it’s simpler than that. I think it’s a simple case of Love That Cannot Be,” Peggy imbues the last phrase with drama, then drains her drink. 

Bruce stalls for time by refilling her glass and carefully re-stoppering the rye.

“I’ve got a knack for that myself,” she confesses, “though at least this time around I had a few years of happiness. And she's just leaving me for the stage, not dying heroically.”

“Maybe you should stay away from performers next time.”

Peggy laughs out loud, and Bruce smiles as well. She leans her shoulder against his, whispering close, “God, you’re cheeky. Most people forget about the whole USO tour Steve did before he ran off into the fight, they focus on the patriotism and heroics that came after. I might not have gotten as much mileage as I have from being _Captain America’s girlfriend_ if they remembered about the tights. I’d be _his_ beard instead.”

“Yes, well.” Bruce clenches his teeth together to keep from talking, unable to think of anything that wouldn’t give away that he knows Steve himself.

“So which one is it?” Even tipsy, Peggy is an English bulldog. “No, don’t tell me. It’s the _devochka_.”

Bruce sighs. Spies.

She notes his reaction and presses, “You know what she is, then.”

“I know _who_ she is, yes.” He can’t let that stand, and not just because they need Peggy on their side to deal with...whatever is hanging over their heads. He’s been watching Natasha struggle to slip back into her old place, and only the dresses fit.

Peggy narrows her eyes, a little more like a squint now thanks to the rye, but still studying him.

Goddamned spies. They see everything, give nothing away. It’s kind of fucking thrilling that this one is giving him a little something, a peek at her own heartbreak. It’s also terrifying, because he knows this game too, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Peggy has quietly outed herself to him, and yeah, Washington DC is a thousand miles away and he’s a generation or two in her future, but it’s a real risk with McCarthyism in full swing. That’s a big down payment she’s made on getting the truth from him.

Bruce rubs his face with one hand. “Go on, ask already.”

Peggy drops her gaze into her glass, not a show of reluctance so much as delicacy. “I have met a few, such as Clara, seen the creche and the kindergarten where they are...trained like fighting dogs. I’ve witnessed their ability to blend in, to be as sweet as a baby sister and play any part seamlessly...”

“Does it ever end?” Bruce asks for her, “Is there anything real underneath?” He’d struck bedrock with Natasha through her fear; him at the end of her barrel, her flinching away from his poised fist. They’d had to work back from that, but he hadn’t had trouble divining sincerity from deception from play since then.

“Is there?” Peggy shakes her head, sorrow and curiosity. Bruce has heard some things of the Red Room, but this woman is a witness, and he desperately hopes she tells him nothing. “Can there be any humanity left?”

Bruce faces Peggy square. “I believe in her humanity far more than my own.”

~*~

It’s too late to be knocking on her door. He’s feeling the alcohol, a little unsteady on his feet, but he’ll lose his nerve if he waits.

Natasha’s hair is mussed around her shoulders like he got her out of bed. She’s wearing something femme and filmy from that magic suitcase, and she looks like a snapshot of a different time. Even in sleep she can’t truly escape the layers here, the characters she’s playing and the person she’d been, and he has to swallow down a wince.

“Come in,” she sounds a little weary, and he shakes his head. “Bruce?” 

She reaches up to touch his neck, fingers gentle on his carotid. He looks at his shoes, at the satin slippers facing off with them that match the pale mint green of her nightgown.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to flounce off like an asshole.”

Her nails graze through the edge of his hair, a soft scritching sound. “Come inside, we’ll talk about it.”

He shakes his head again. “I just...I wanted to finish what I started to say. Earlier.”

Her eyes are nearly hazel in this light, and he sees a hint of trepidation in them. It’s inexplicably reassuring, makes him sounder in his purpose. He couldn’t trust this if they weren’t both wary.

“I know it’s not a real answer,” he says softly, “Just a pipe dream. But for a moment, I let myself get lost in that idea. That if we didn’t go back, if the Other Guy really is just part of me now, then maybe I could...take the risk. Not even to have, really, but to…”

“To let yourself want.” She’s so fucking smart, so savvy with the human condition, with him, even when he can’t believe what’s in front of him she gives him this thing that feels like hope.

“Yes,” he agrees softly.

“And what,” she licks her upper lip, a tiny tic he sees only when she’s very, very relaxed, or at the edge of her control, “What do you want?”

Before he can stop himself he’s touching her face. She reaches up and settles her cheek into his palm, pressing his hand between her strong fingers and velvety skin. His throat tightens. He doesn’t move, doubting suddenly that he can do this, that he has the right, that she...

“This would be a really good time to kiss me,” she murmurs, and he hitches out a laugh, lets it carry him down so her face is cradled in both his hands. She meets him halfway, breath warm on his lips, mouth so sweet he can barely stand it.

The kiss lasts for a heartbeat, two, but he sways on his feet with how good it is, how right it feels to close that distance. 

Her eyelashes flutter like she’s savoring the taste, and then she blinks, moves back a hairsbreadth to meet his gaze. She brushes his lower lip with her thumb.

“Go to sleep, Bruce,” she gently pushes him back into the hallway.

He can't help the rebellious smirk. She tilts her head as if to say suit yourself.

He fumbles his key from his pocket and hears her call softly, “Unless you want to wrestle?” before shutting the door on a giggle.

~*~

Tony’s in the bed even though it’s Bruce’s night, but he’s not gonna be petty about it. He’s the one who stormed off, after all.

He tries to be quiet as he changes, but he’s banging elbows and knocking tubes of pomade into the sink, awkward and a little drunk, more than a little giddy and frustrated, completely off-kilter in this haunted time. He forgoes brushing his teeth because the kiss burns through him, the feel of Natasha’s face in his hands, and he wants to take at least the taste of her to bed. That foolishness contrasts with Carter's ruthless practicality, the way she sees straight through to the choices to be made. He has none of that rationality right now, only longing. How badly he’d wanted to tell Peggy that Steve isn’t lost forever to ice and time. It was the only spot of comfort he had for her, even though she wasn’t seeking any, and he didn't dare give it.

There is no satisfaction to be had tonight. The settee with its hard angled cushions and upholstery seemingly made of fiberglass, well that's only the capper. Still, he’s trying to find a less miserable position when Tony flicks on the light, swings his legs over and sits on the edge of the bed.

“Sorry,” Bruce blinks at the flood of light over the room. “I didn’t mean to wake…”

“Can’t sleep,” Tony waves him off. “Can you?”

“The couch doesn’t help.”

Tony runs a hand through his hair, making it stand up on end. “Did you know that Natasha gets this...little wrinkle...between her eyes, when you do something that worries her?”

Bruce swallows, guilt sticking in his throat.

“Yeah, I didn’t know that.” Tony jostles his shoulders, his tone deceptively philosophical. “I didn’t want to know that, really. Because when she gets worried, I’m literally required to piss my pants in terror. You'll know to look for that wrinkle now. It’s pretty subtle, but you know how unfiltered facial expressions on her speak volumes.”

“I wasn’t…” Bruce expects to be cut off, but Tony waits for him to finish. Bruce doesn't have anything to add but a sigh.

“I know. I strolled through the lobby, saw you talking to Carter. I didn’t think you were going to ground, but...Natasha gets that little wrinkle.”

“Tony...” Bruce sits up, hands on his thighs rubbing against the thin cotton.

“It’s being here, like walking amongst ghosts,” he says. “These people building the future we’re gonna take over, and fuck up and save. And I can’t warn any of them, because what if I do and it changes the future, and none of us exist? Would a warning even make the present better, let alone the future?”

Bruce gets up and goes to sit down next to Tony on the bed. 

“I hate not being able to do anything, Bruce. I hate that you think, even for a second, that staying here would be better than going home. I hate that Romanoff is reliving her fucking past, walking around wearing a killer’s skin and a killer’s smile. I hate that I can’t be fucking pissed off at Howard about half the things that always made me angry, because he may have taken Mom for granted at some point, but he _really did love her_.”

He can’t look at Tony, because there’s no comfort to be given here either. Even the best moments in this place are isolating, talking to people long dead, lost in a past that didn’t include you.

Tony continues. “I hate that our master plan is to separate two people who found some happiness in each other, because that might keep the timeline we know on track, and the other option is to watch Romanoff show off her wetwork skills. It feels so fucking ruthless.”

Bruce puts his hand between Tony’s shoulder blades. “I don’t think we’re responsible for that breakup, or at least not solely. Cold comfort maybe, but Carter’s way ahead of us.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” Tony snorts, “Because you really are terrible at this.”

“Maybe we’re supposed to keep them together instead,” he considers, because apparently he’s temporarily an optimist. “Change the future.”

“You believe that?” 

“No.” Bruce shakes his head, “I think Odin’s just a gigantic asshole. Punishing us or testing us. I don’t know. Keeping the timeline as we know it may keep us from straying too far afield from our home spot in the multiverse…”

“But we're leaning heavily on the tenets of time-travel thought experiments--”

“It's okay,” he pats Tony's back, “you can just come right out and say Doctor Who.”

“--which unfortunately is as close to science as we’ve got.”

“If I believe in anything, it’s the laws of the universe.”

“Which we’re currently breaking.”

“As we know them currently, yes.” Bruce knuckles at his eyes, rubbing the bridge of his nose where the heavy glasses have left dents. “Except maybe Murphy's Law.”

“You are not remotely helpful, did you know that?”

Bruce shrugs. “It’s been said before.”

Tony is silent for a moment, then says, “Clock’s ticking, though. I can feel it.”

Bruce can too. He nods, squeezes Tony’s shoulder, and heads to the couch to fight for sleep.


	8. Mixed Doubles - Saturday, Sept. 6, 1952

### CH8 - Mixed Doubles - Saturday, Sept. 6, 1952

Peggy’s serve is wicked, the ball curving over the net to hit the court with a solid _thwick_. Tony’s barely fast enough to volley it back, and he’s outmatched by Jarvis and his long reach, returning the ball with a brisk backhand. It slips past Natasha and bounces by Tony, just barely skimming the line.

Bruce has found an angle for both the hat and sunglasses, legs stretched out in front of him in the deck chair. The mojito he’d ordered, trying to forestall further tampering, sports a suspicious antifreeze green hue. He drinks it anyway.

It tastes of licorice and orange.

Angie is at the table next to him, feet on another chair while Maria lounges at his other side, propped gently to ease the pressure on her hip.

“Meet a mugger in an alley?” Angie asks, sipping her more accurately hued drink and gesturing at his knuckles.

Howard and Ana volley with practiced ease on the court next to the mixed doubles match.

“Nightmare,” Bruce says, “Banged my hand on the wall.”

“Uh huh,” the way Angie says it makes it sound dirty instead of dangerous, and Maria huffs out a low chuckle.

There’s a restlessness pervading the group. Even the aggressive tennis just stirs the pot. Peggy and Jarvis had nearly come to blows over an initial botched volley.

“How’s the hip?” Bruce has remembered to check with Maria once before, figures an actual doctor would probably express some concern, but frankly, she seems well-tended and determined to progress as if nothing had happened, ice packs and tennis abstention aside. “How are you feeling?“

“Sore, frumpy. Unwittingly helping Howard in his ridiculous quixotic quest.”

Bruce thinks about following up on that, decides that ignorance is bliss. “Are you sure you’re up for an excursion today?”

Maria’s eyes are on Howard when she says, “Absolutely.”

Howard and Ana have finished their warm up and are heading back to the tables, Ana blotting away sweat.

Howard looks down at Bruce. “You don’t play tennis?”

Bruce has never had the time nor the opportunity to learn most of the country club pastimes. Ones that require patience and practice and good sportsmanship. It’s hard to perfect a swing when you’re living on the run. But people played versions of bocce all over the world.

Bruce shakes his head. “I lack the temperament for most sports. Bocce was...supposed to be more game than sport. But that's how it often goes.”

“This is how you get a doctor who doesn't play golf,” Angie teases. 

Howard sits then, scooting his chair a little closer to Maria and drinking deeply from his highball. “Eddie mentioned that he knew you from the war. Army medic?”

There are a lot of ways to steer this conversation. Bruce struggles with the urge to give in to curiosity and nudge it in a specific direction. That recklessness is paired with the realization that he doesn’t exactly remember all of his cover anyway.

“Physics, chemistry and biology first. I was part of one of the smaller science reserves,” he says. “Nothing like what you worked on. I fell into medicine after the war.”

Maria sits up a little, and Angie cocks her head. Natasha’s lessons ring clear: give to get. Show your hand, but hold back your ace.

“There was an incident, and I...had a breakdown. Nerves.” It was common enough, shell-shock and trauma. “I lost my taste for research and testing.”

“And moved into private practice?”

“Eddie and I served together. He had just been diagnosed with his heart condition. He invited me to be his personal physician.”

Maria is still thoughtful, saying slowly, “That’s a very specific type of kindness.”

“Yes,” Bruce agrees.

“He’s got a good heart,” Angie says, “even if the ticker’s not so great.”

Howard and Maria are now conferring in intense whispers out the sides of their mouths even as they watch the game with placid expressions. Bruce is not eavesdropping on purpose, but he does hear Howard chide, “well we _could_ be screwing like bunnies right about now,” to which Maria suggests he “go piss up a rope.” They’re also tenderly holding hands.

It’s a wonder Tony turned out sane at all, really.

The tennis partners have conceded the game, and Natasha sinks gracefully into the chair nearest Bruce. He pours her a glass of water with cucumber slices. Her skin is pink, glistening with sweat, red tendrils curling damply at the base of her neck. She smiles lazily at him.

“They trounced us,” she says cheerfully, and nudges his knee with her shoe. “Sure you won’t take over for Eddie? He’s too easily distracted.”

Bruce raises his hand, flexes his fingers and she pokes at him again.

“Banging against the wall,” Angie says, and nearly keeps a straight face.

“Okay, I have to ask,” Bruce leans toward Angie, “I think I may need a diagram on how you think I could have achieved that.”

“No time,” Peggy says, giving her racket a spin in her hand, “We’ve an appointment with a mercenary.”

~*~

Bringing Bruce and Maria had been a last minute suggestion of Natasha’s, reading Bruce’s mood and Maria’s restlessness.

“It’s a decent idea,” Carter had conceded. “A population in need of medical care. It makes us look like interfering socialites, which isn’t terrible.”

“International cooperation,” Natasha agreed.

“Though I hear,” Peggy added, straight faced, “That there’s been a particularly virulent stomach ‘flu moving through the camp.”

Bruce had gone a little pale, but his glare remained on point.

Maria had gone into town following the tennis game, and loaded up the trunk of the roadster with every supply Bruce had rattled off. Now she’s in a plain cotton dress that clearly predates Howard, a kerchief tied and pinned on her head in a way that means business.

Bruce carries the doctor’s bag Natasha had pulled out of the suitcase in her room earlier that week. With his dark hair and recent tan, he fits in better than the rest of them. His Spanish is solid, even if the accent is a little off.

“Do we really think,” Natasha asks as they drive towards the sugar cane camps, “that it’s a good idea to send the Mr. Starks off to play golf with the ladies?”

Maria offers that achingly familiar grin, “Angie’s plan is to run up the bar tab at the clubhouse, so I doubt that’ll be a problem.”

“And Ana is a bit of a ringer,” Peggy adds, “I expect her to do quite well.”

The difference is shocking between the heart of Havana with its clubs and restaurants, its bright vivacity and wealth, and the makeshift tenacity of the rural poor scraping by. It’s nearing the soggy end of the rainy season, the dead season for the sugar cane cutters, unpaid for months already, perhaps months to come. They’re far from idle, working vegetable plots back in their village to keep body and soul together until the dry season comes and they pick up their machetes and migrate back to the cane fields.

“Economic disparity often fuels conflict,” Peggy says, tight-lipped.

Natasha resists the urge to say, _You have no idea_.

Peggy points to a building of whitewashed clapboard and a thatched roof, and tells Bruce that the people in the area have been informed already of the temporary clinic. The appearance of a short, dark haired woman with a makeshift nurse’s cap and an impatient wave proves her point.

“Ven aqui,” she says, “El medico?”

Bruce nods, and she gestures him over. Maria follows, carrying a large box of supplies.

Natasha follows Peggy deeper into the ramshackle community, a step behind and to the left on the hard pack ground gone soft from all the rain. She’s in the flat canvas deck shoes and linen pedal pusher pants, as practical an outfit as she could assemble in a time before women -- who weren't actively ranching -- could wear jeans. She misses the comfort of sturdy boots.

The woman who gestures Peggy inside the hut has dirty blond hair, dark eyes, and a fierce expression. There’s a bearded man sitting at her table, shoulders hunched over a map.

He looks up at the two women, brow furrowing. His greeting is rude, and in Russian. 

Peggy replies, scathing, then takes a seat. Natasha stands behind her at parade rest.

“You have information.” 

He nods. “The Russians are bargaining with Batista. They want the Americans out.”

Peggy waves her hand. “He’ll never agree. Too much money’s in play. Also, that’s not news.”

“Speaking of which...”

“No.” Peggy crosses her arms. “Information. One of our party was nearly killed. And you have the rare privilege of knowing who I am and what I represent. Which makes me think you’ve been sharing that knowledge. So, I think you’ve probably already been rewarded, if not as handsomely as you might have liked.”

He shakes his head. “I haven’t told anyone that you’re here, Carter. But you haven’t been terribly discreet.”

There’s a sibilant hiss to his consonants that Natasha finds almost soothing. It takes her back to the creche, though Clint would say he sounds like a Bond villain. This whole caper would be catnip for Clint, with his weakness for terrible old spy movies.

Carter leans forward. “How much did they pay you, Sergei? Enough to make up for never working for SHIELD again? Because you know the Americans won’t continue to fund your activities once they get what they want from you.”

“What kind of name is SHIELD,” he mutters in Russian, and Natasha fights off a smirk because the Russian word for _shield_ is a homophone for the English word _shit_.

“They love their shitty acronyms,” she replies, layering in a little bit of city drawl into her accent, a hint of camaraderie.

“Russian?” He’s surprised. “Does that make you the sword? Or the dick in the ass?”

Natasha tuts and switches to her British lilt, clipped and precise, “I'm sure I don't know what you mean.” It’s been some time since she’s pulled it out, but the accent is as easy as the lie.

“Alright, Sergei,” Carter throws her an odd look, but rounds back on her contact, “then who did you tell?”

He moves his jaw around, and then finally, sighs. “The Americans. The other ones.”

~*~

It’s been a few years since he's done this kind of nursing, but Bruce settles quickly into the hectic work of the makeshift clinic. The stripped-raw empathy is distracting, but he tries to bend with it, gentling his hands as he treats burns and lacerations, doses out the sulfa antibiotics Maria brought for the gnarlier infections, and assesses the number of dehydrated people of all ages struggling with what he suspects is cholera.

Bruce leans on the expertise of Nurse Sirenia, and after a few moments of wariness Sirenia realizes that Maria will gladly be her gopher and so keeps her fetching and cleaning in turn.

They work through the backlog of patients as the sun sets, and are down to a handful who are in still in rough shape, each one accompanied by the family members who’d brought them in.

In the back of his mind he’s worried about Natasha, which he recognizes is an indulgence, because if anything he’s even more of a liability in a crisis now. He’d chased after her in the streets like running through molasses, rounding into the alleyway to see the whip of her skirt and hair as she threw herself into the knot of thugs. He’d barreled into them, knocking heads against brick, bellowing in frustration when he caught the flash of a knife coming at him, tightening his choke hold when he saw her knock the weapon away like an afterthought as she climbed and vaulted his would-be attacker like a chain link fence.

He’s not a last resort, or a defense, or a shield. He’s a hindrance whether he freezes or snaps.

Here, though...

There’s a family in the corner, wilted mother and toddler attended by her husband and two older women, the grandmothers. One of the abuelas begins leading them in a rosary, call and response in a soothing cadence. The baby is nursing, which is a good sign for them both. Maria joins along with the Pater Nosters and Ave Marias, in rote singsong as she doles out another round of oral rehydration solution like punch from the big enameled metal bowl, consulting her watch to note the time. She’s gone quiet otherwise.

Bruce is glad they came, grateful to feel useful and actually contribute something. He’s also intrigued to watch Maria at work, bending her Latin and colloquial Italian to get the gist of the Spanish, her detailed focus and her compassion. Unlike her son, she’s a calming presence, soothing.

Now that it’s slowed down for the night, Bruce and Nurse Sirenia sit at a small table just outside the door, updating records. He’s teaching her the rehydration protocol they used in Kolkata, almost assuredly anachronistic, but he could give a damn. Her eyes narrow and she chews thoughtfully on her lip, not just keen to learn the ratios of electrolytes and sugar to water, but also running him through diagnostic scenarios and decision trees. The kerosene lamp sheds some light into the doorway, enough to see at least some of their charges are fitfully sleeping. 

“Es que estudiando para ser médico?” Nurse Sirenia asks, nodding to where Maria kneels to take the pulse of an older man resting on a blanket on the floor. _Is she a med student?_

“Mas o menos,” Bruce hedges, _more or less._

“She has a good touch.”

“Sí, sí...she could help a lot of people.”

~*~

Tony is proud of himself for taking the sucker bet Angie proposed when they split into mixed doubles for golf. She implied that the competition would be between himself and Howard, and Tony went along with that as if he didn’t know Howard was mediocre at best and it was Ana who would slay him with her swing.

Which she does, though she waits a few holes before unleashing on him and Angie. She winks at him when he gives her a knowing smirk and a crisp fifty on the way to the clubhouse.

Howard’s a magnanimous winner, inviting Tony to accompany him fishing in a few days.

Now they’re ensconced in big green leather club chairs around a low square table, fiddling with the dominoes like they’re playing, but it’s more something to do with their hands as they cool off in the air conditioning and get sauced.

“How’s the quest coming along?” Angie asks Howard with an innocence so complete it’s frankly dirty, leaning over to explain to Tony, “He’s trying to win Maria’s hand, but she’s only in it for the fun. So he’s decided to stop being fun and see if that gets him any further.”

Howard twitches his shoulders back, but doesn’t correct Angie’s assessment, just adds with an offended dignity, “Last night we cuddled and watched the television. It was a show about cooking, which was more interesting than I thought it’d be.”

Tony shifts the conversation away from his parents’ physical relationship with the same desperate ferocity he’s used to fight for his life. “Was it the lady making the shrimp thing? I watched that, too, um, _Cocino au Minuto_ , right?”

“ _Cucino al Minuto_ , yeah,” Howard corrects with a gesture of his glass, and it’s like there’s still shrapnel in Tony’s chest, but he breathes through it, keeping the smile plastered on his face. “Though I can’t see showing anything like that in the States - Americans aren’t going to sit still and watch someone cook - though maybe if they solve the color issue.”

“Did you not just say that you both watched this cooking show?” Ana shakes her head. “Are you not Americans, then?”

“They’re Starks,” Angie says. “They both made the mental leap that the cooking was for them, so it was interesting.”

“I can see that,” Ana concedes, “I very much enjoy watching Mr. Jarvis prepare a meal for us.”

“Food is love,” Angie says, “ask any Italian grandmother.”

“Or Jewish. But I admit I did not get the same joy watching my Bubbe cook as when Mr. Jarvis makes her paprikash for me.”

“Maybe I need to consult an Italian grandmother,” Howard slants his eyebrows at Angie, “or at least a signorina.”

“Do I look like I can cook?” She throws her head back, laughing, “I’ve stirred more pots onstage than in real life, if you count cauldrons. I’m more strega than nonna and you know it.”

“I had a nonna and a bubbie both,” Tony clears his throat, remembering how he’d diligently picked bits of eggshell out of the bowl over and over again in his jet’s tiny kitchenette, thinking that if he could get the omelette to work, get Pepper to eat it, the words would come easily after that. “Not that I can cook, but, apparently I got a double dose of wanting to feed people I care about.”

Howard hums in thought. Angie and Ana compare the grandchild fattening techniques they were each subjected to as children, and Tony ponders the pair of stately elderly gentlemen the next table over, playing a game with six dice in a cup as they generate a cloud of cigar smoke. They look like brothers, except one is nearly bald while the other has thick salt and pepper hair. Tony studies the sculpted waves that crash over the man’s forehead into a few perfect curls about the same diameter as the chaos that reigns over Banner’s whole head. He has to know.

“Pardon me, sir,” Tony leans over the back of his chair, “can I ask you how you get your hair to do that?"

“No ingles,” the man shakes his head, looking to his companion.

“Tu cabello pomposo,” the bald man jibes, _your pompous hair_ , laughing too hard to finish. Definitely brothers.

“El cual pomada, señor?” Howard rattles off, asking after his pomade, continuing in Español, "and is there any place around here a weary gentleman can take in a shvitz?"

“Schvitz?” Ana echoes incredulously.

“Er,” Howard squinches his face for a second to call up the non-Yiddish, “la sauna?”

“I would have expected a cold shower,” Angie says, “between the humidity and the stupidity.”

~*~

The ride home is quiet. Maria is lost in thought, gazing out the window in the front seat. Peggy drives with a tight grip, mouth set hard as she makes her way from the darkness of the camp to the well-lit boulevard along the coast.

Natasha sits in the back with Bruce. His head is thrown back, neck exposed, hand lax on the seat next to hers. She links her pinky finger with his, and he curls his hand enough to answer the gesture.

She’d seen them both, sleeves rolled, focused intent, expressions that spoke volumes about suffering, how needless it was. She holds tight to that vision, of what Maria is learning, of how it may shape her decisions. Of Bruce offering up himself to others, not simply atonement, but avocation. Whatever timeline they're traveling, his efforts are steady. She's oddly touched by that devotion, no matter its impetus.

Natasha had watched Sergei’s fear grow, Carter’s fierce dogged focus, and there’d been a ping. Back when she was working for herself, when she had no one to depend on, that ping had been the only thing she could depend on. And now, it was telling her that whatever was keeping them here had shifted. It lay in this space between Carter’s bloodied fist, and Sergei’s ragged, bloodied smile.

One punch. Just the one, and then Natasha had leaned down, and whispered in Sergei’s ear all about the kind of thing girls like her could do to him if he was lying. If he betrayed them further. All while stroking along his clavicle with a gentle thumb, resting it in the hollow of his throat.

Sergei was Russian, and connected enough to have heard the rumours about girls like her. She thinks, maybe, she’s not the first one he’s met.

Her gift is taking things apart, and that’s Bruce’s curse; his gift is putting them back together.

She suspects Peggy curse is to be gifted at both, and always have to choose which and when. She wonders if that's the root of Dottie's fascination.

Peggy hands the keys to the valet at the hotel and steers Maria towards the entrance, not looking back. Bruce holds open the door of the roadster, helps Natasha out, and then leans against it, facing the road, momentum lost in the glare of the hotel’s bright lights. The valet politely asks if he can help, and Bruce holds up his hands, backs away. She understands, feels the pull of the dark. 

The meeting today started to knit together a bigger vision for her - of why she's here, this version and not the original flavor. And she aches a little with it. Bruce smiles at her, eyes glinting in the ambient light, so weary. His face is drawn, and surprisingly...dear to her. The car has pulled away, the others are close to the door and she and Bruce remain shadowed.

He moves towards the circle of light from the marquee, and she snags his wrist, keeping him in the dark. He stills, turns back toward her, head cocked, and she steps into his space, rises up on her toes, curling her hand around his neck.

He’s warm, always so warm, but his mouth is cool, lips soft and the kiss is less tentative this time because she knows what she wants.

He lays a hand on her hip, surprise evident in his posture. She doesn't pause, just enjoys the press of his mouth against hers, the brush of his eyeglass frames along her cheek as he relaxes, welcomes her touch. Then he’s holding her around the waist, tongue stroking into her mouth, gentle and lazy, a question and an answer. 

When he pulls away, there’s something so lush about the set of his mouth; she can barely breathe with it.

“What was that?” He murmurs, and she tells him the truth.

“I just wanted to.”

He still has a hand on her waist when he murmurs, “What else do you want?”

She doesn’t answer, just moves away, deliberate, a glance over her shoulder, and he follows her into the hotel.

They’re quiet in the elevator, shoulders pressed together, but it feels loud in her head. Louder when she unlocks her room as he brackets her in the doorway, close enough that she can feel his warmth, smell the antiseptic carbolic soap from the clinic, the salt of his skin where his hair has dried at the base of his neck.

She switches on the lamp by the door, putting her bag on the chair. He’s fiddling with his hands. She wants to still him, but she likes watching him twitch a little, desire and purpose and patience warring with need.

He catches her eyes, and he isn’t smiling but he’s so full of life, so present, and she moves to turn on the light by the bed because she wants to see him when she touches him again.

The suitcase on the bed surprises her but it’s been a long day; she might have left it there.

The dead rat, however, never belonged to her.

~*~

Howard’s pacing the lobby when they get back, and Maria watches the tight look on his face break into relief when he sees her. It makes her feel guilty, like she’s hurt him, but she’s too tired to examine any of that. She’s a sweaty mess, her hip is an achy knot, her brain is racing and her soul hurts.

He slips an arm around her waist and takes her to the suite, ordering a meal in while she showers, wrapping her in his robe and all but feeding her.

He pulls her into the bed with him, against his chest like a teddy bear, and in the dark she tells him about the baby and his mother, a toddler really, but weak as a kitten and his mother no better, her pulse a thready flutter, eyes sunken. How scared she was for them, that they would continue to wilt and die, all for lack of something as basic as clean water.

They talk about the future, and what Maria would like to see in it.

~*~

When Tony gets back to his room that night, Romanoff is sitting on his couch again, a drink in her hand. Bruce is on the other side of the room, but he’s watching her.

“I found some bedtime reading.” Tony looks between them, flicks the paper in his hand, and folds it with precision so that it highlights the eight inches of column space the story takes up on page six. “About the charming little apartment we were led to the other day.”

“Are you trying to pick up Spanish while you’re here?” Natasha asks.

Tony waves this off, “I’m a citizen of the world, Romanoff.”

“You just want to understand the cooking show.” Bruce picks up the paper to translate aloud.

“I feel like I’m halfway there, you know?”

“' _...police entered the apartment to find Naldo Flores y Izquierdo and his father Lázaro Flores y Rodriguez dead. Unnamed sources cite tensions concerning the family businesses'_...then it implies an argument got out of hand and resulted in mutually fatal gunfire.” Bruce skims the rest of the text. “Nightclubs, an import/export business, family wealth built from sugar...' _Doña Vera Izquierdo y Caro viuda de Flores vows to honor the memory of her husband and eldest son...uniting the family with her youngest son Silvio at her side,_ '…oh, and it ends with a vague reference to cocaine smuggling.”

“The other white powder,” Natasha says.

Tony adds, tapping the side of his nose, “Never hurts to diversify.”

“So we facilitated a coup of sorts,” Bruce tosses the paper onto the table, “but who for, the Americans, the Soviets?”

“For Doña Vera, etc. Dottie Underwood is a freelancer,” Natasha says, “so she goes where the money is, not the ideology. Though I feel obligated to point out she’s not going where the _big_ money is, whether from a sense of morality or because she wants to stay off the radar of the major players, that remains to be seen.”

“You think she left you that...message,” Bruce’s gesture is delicate, but his open collar frames the tight tendons of his neck.

She nods once, and Tony’s lost.

“Vermin,” Romanoff says, nodding toward the bed. “With a broken neck.”

His mouth curls with distaste.

“I got rid of it,“ Bruce says, edgy like he gets before the change when he can’t really modulate consistently. When his eyes dart to Natasha, Tony realizes that the tension isn’t tender sensibilities or disgust, it’s all wariness on her behalf.

“You can’t handle vomit, but murdered rodents as pillow mints are fine?”

“Squishy biology, Tony. Remember? I’ve murdered more mice than people.”

“That is...disturbingly dark, Bolas.” Tony pulls his stiff leather shoes off with genuine relief. He will never tease Pepper for going barefoot again.

Romanoff gets up from the settee. “I’m going to bed,” she says.

Bruce watches her leave, staying that way for a long moment before he shakes himself, coming around and reflexively checking the time.

“Of course,” he says, jaw clenching as he pinches out the stem and starts winding, craning around to check the bedside clock. “I hate this piece of shit watch.”


	9. Embassy Sweets - Sunday, Sept. 7, 1952

### CH9 - Embassy Sweets - Sunday, Sept. 7, 1952

Maria, Ana and Angie have gone to mass, because Maria wanted to observe the Cathedral in action. They’d all agreed to sit in back, for a variety of reasons which boiled down to Angie’s quip, “A Sapphite, a fornicator, and a Jew walk into a bar…”

It was all Howard could do to keep from laughing until he saw Maria smirk first. On their way out Angie had pulled him aside to whisper, “I’ll let you know if she goes to confession.”

“Why, what would that mean?”

She’d given him a look of pity. “It would mean she’s sorry.”

This left him with Peggy, who’s in a strop and wants to walk into the embassy in broad daylight and break into the attache’s office. He almost regrets choosing to forego an hour of the hokey-pokey in Latin.

“It’s a skeleton staff on Sundays,” Peggy argues, “and Finley is notorious for working banker’s hours. It’s the perfect time. I know he’s one of the CIA’s plants, for all the state department is paying his salary.”

“What, exactly, do you think the file on SHIELD is going to tell you, Peg?”

She’s pacing around the room, and honestly, Howard has a headache, and a heartache that’s starting to soothe a little, but is tender still. He’d fucked up so badly with Maria, but she’d allowed him to hold her last night, confided in him, and he can see hope that’s so far beyond the typical type of desire he understands, that he’s nursing it like an injury.

“Sergei’s information pointed at interagency feuding,” Peggy says, and he thinks maybe he should take that tumbler out of her hand, because they’re already down a coffee cup. “Which is such utter rot if that is the motivator.”

Howard’s righteous indignation is starting to match Peggy’s. If Maria had been hurt just because the CIA was too pissy to cooperate with SHIELD, or because they were running an operation they shouldn’t be…

Peggy sees his expression and presses on, taking ruthless advantage.

“Howard, this is what I’ve been talking about for two years.” She stops, sets the tumbler down with exaggerated care. “This is exactly why I want SHIELD to be more than just a wilted version of the SSR. If they’re going to bother with a name change, with using Steve’s legacy as a symbol, they have a bloody obligation to be...more. To be better. To rise above petty international backstabbing. To cooperate.”

Christ, he was hoping to avoid this argument, at least until they were back home. He’d really been hoping to go back to research, maybe hire a COO capable of running the daily grind part of Stark Industries. Stane has been pushing for more responsibility, and he’s proven savvy with people as well as numbers. Maybe it’s time to actively consider it, answer both needs.

He knows Peggy isn’t going to let this go. She kneels beside his chair, a beggar’s position that does nothing to temper the determination in her voice, in those piercing brown eyes, but she’s using every tool in her arsenal. “The only way SHIELD can rise above is if some of the great minds, the great thinkers and builders, diplomats and scientists, sign on. It’s time, Howard, for you to commit your time and talent.”

“Peggy,” he says, pleading a little as he leans over the arm of the chair. He knows she’s in the running to succeed Phillips, but in the fight for the Director position she’s going to need more than a vision to fire up the troops, she’ll need to offer resources only she can bring to the table. “Are you really ready for what that’ll require? To build an international agency? To police the world?”

“Yes,” she says, eyes fierce, “it’s better than fighting over pieces of it.”

He has no doubt she means it. Just like he has no doubt that he’s going to find himself accompanying her to the American embassy.

“Fine,” he says, holds up a hand, “We’ll go violate some international laws. And later, we’ll talk about SHIELD.”

She smiles, puts her hand over his. “I believe our latest recruits might be able to help. I’ve a feeling Miss Vodoskaya has some experience in distracting eager young men from their work.”

~*~

Bruce had dreamt of Natasha’s head pressed to his chest, listening to his heart choke and sputter as he watched children drown in dust.

He wakes irritable and anxious, Tony’s sawing snore a a grate to his nerves, and finds himself unable to shake off the restless dissatisfaction. He knows this feeling; it usually precedes the itch to run, to move, to embrace the unfamiliar. Here, he thinks it’s probably the dichotomy -- the wretched condition of the camps compared to the luxury of the hotel, the ease and lackadaisical passing of time in this weird vacation with so much unknown at stake.

The feeling of Natasha’s waist under his palms, the pliant draw of her body becoming a rigid distance after he’d disposed of Underwood’s token.

Bruce is at loose ends. There’s no real work to do here beyond tagging after Natasha, acting as a cover for Tony. He doesn’t like feeling useless, and yesterday he’d had a purpose. It’s hard to see work needing to be done, and retreat from it. At the same time, Bruce can’t really trust that impulse. He recognizes the bitter self-righteousness that he’s carried with him since early adolescence, although there’s a new scent to it.

Splashing water on his face, he indulges in fleeting thoughts of knocking on Natasha’s door, how she’d look fresh out of bed -- sleep rumpled, warm, soft and lovely, flashing that wry smile. Or alternately, and far worse, wreathed in the serious, blank containment she’d worn last night, folding all her thoughts back inside before going to bed alone. Keeping her fears and dangers and loneliness to herself.

Perhaps he should have followed her, but he didn’t want to be turned away. He shakes his head, knocking out the worry like water from his ear. Better to have stayed behind, to live with the grating edge of uncertainty than meet rejection head on.

He balls his fists against the basin. 

God, when did this piss-poor passive aggression become his modus operandi? With the monster? Or before? Evasion, avoidance, loathing, how can she look at him and not see this weakness? If only...

His hands are shaking and he forces them open. He fights the urge to pick up the bowl, dash it against the mirror, throw the heavy porcelain as hard as he can. Pitch the pitcher after it. Smash the table, turn over chairs. Draw blood, spatter brains. 

Fuck. 

He needs to get out of here. Shake this off, strip the ugliness away before it turns outwards.

He doesn't remember the walk through the lobby, doesn't remember anything until he’s standing in traffic, horns honking. He stumbles back onto the sidewalk, a car narrowly missing him.

The morning air is cool and thick, more dawn than day, and he just starts walking, heading away from the hotel out to the fortress they’d visited yesterday with the Jarvises. 

It’s further than he thought, and it’s hot by the time he gets there. His muscles are sore from clenching his shoulders, trying not to shove against people. Much of the rage has burned away, leaving him in a state of thready disquiet. He's hungry, thirsty. Not lost, but not yet found.

The fortress is up ahead, but he’s spent. There's a coffee stand on the right.

Bruce orders a cafecito, and reaches for his wallet. It's not there. He's left without it.

“Lo siento,” he murmurs in apology, hands up, and the clerk takes the tiny cup away and points back to the street.

Fair enough.

Bruce stands on the sidewalk, tries not to think about the ache along his ankle and the long walk back in new shoes without socks.

He’s sweaty, dusty, his hair a mess -- sleep mashed in back, drying in ragged curls down his forehead. The pairs of young women strolling arm in arm eye him dubiously. He must look worse than he thought. He pushes back his hair, self-conscious. Maybe Tony’s right about the product.

And yet, there’s part of this that’s freeing. He’s anonymous here. He speaks the language well enough. He has marketable skills. He truly could disappear. In the hotel room, when he’d answered Tony, when he’d given in to Natasha’s gentle game of _what if_ , he’d been looking at what he’d lose by going back, but if he stayed…

Bruce doesn’t think he’s what’s holding them here. Odin’s asshole play with the drinks smacks of a dickish feint. He’s enjoying fucking with Bruce, taunting him with the knowledge of what he carries inside, the tainted legacy he was given even before the gamma. That anything he touches can turn green and distasteful. 

He’s not sure Odin would let it happen, but maybe the god also recognizes the benefit of relocating him in time. Of keeping the world safe from him.

They’ve been tossing around the concept of choice, and maybe this is his. Whether to disappear. Abandon his friends. Gracefully fade away. But would they let him? Natasha, maybe. That grinds in his gut, but at the same time it’s reassuring. That she’d see the choice for what it was. But Tony? No. He’d never let it happen. Or maybe that’s just what Bruce hopes.

God, that’s fucked up. Loving one person because they’d let you go, and the other because they wouldn’t.

There’s a bench near the road leading up to the fortress, a bus stop perhaps. He sits, weary, and watches the traffic, the tourists, the locals taking cash and sipping coffee at the gift shop.

Eventually, the sun hot on his back, Bruce gets up and heads back to the hotel. He’ll run away some other time.

By the time he gets back, Tony and Natasha are long gone, infiltrating an embassy with the founders of SHIELD. His feet are sore, blistered heels and aching soles outlining where he’s gotten soft from staying in one place, from having a place he _could_ stay. He’s disgusted at his own carelessness. He wants a shower, some coffee, a late breakfast.

As it turns out, he also doesn’t have his key.

~*~

“We go without him, “ Natasha decides, looking around the lobby. “If he’s going to play possum, I’m not going to persuade him otherwise.”

Tony doesn’t disagree, but doesn’t love it either. Bruce missing generally equals Bruce breaking shit or falling into a hole of self-loathing. Neither really tracks with the mood he’d been in the night before, more withdrawn than browbeating...but then Bruce has been mercurial since they landed in this clusterfuck of Einstein’s wet dream.

That he went on a walkabout rather than play spy games this morning is within the realm of possibility.

Tony doesn’t blame him, in fact he's a bit envious. He’s somehow fumbled into this cold war stand-off between two superpowers, aiding Natasha and Carter’s plan to get a hold of a list of CIA operations being run in Cuba to supplement the prior day’s haul of Soviet intel.

Carter’s got her gloves in her hand, and is literally tapping her foot. Howard has a toothpick poking jauntily from his mouth, but it just looks like a failed attempt to cover clenched teeth.

Tony sighs, follows them out. Jarvis is in the driver’s seat of Howard’s roadster, radiating silent, and then not so silent, disapproval.

Halfway to the embassy, Tony has them pull over to the side of the road. He hands out the comms he’d modified.

Peggy rolls them around in her palm and Howard holds his up to the light. “Tiny,” he says, a mixture of awe and suspicion. “How can the transmission frequency--”

“It’s patented,” Tony says quickly. “During the war, I worked with a variety of scientists. The prototype never made it out onto the battlefield, but I kept refining it as a side project.”

Howard’s suspicious face is achingly familiar.

Tony pushes further. “It’s based on the transmitter you created to work with the Howling Commandos.”

None of that’s a lie, it’s just that Tony had to backwards modify a comm Natasha had given him, rewire a few hearing aids she’d acquired by whatever devious methods got a department store to open early on a Sunday, then apply the tech.

Peggy puts it in her ear. 

“It’s comfortable,” she says. Tony holds up the receiver.

“We’ll be able to hear you, if you need anything.”

Howard continues to examine the small device for the rest of the ride over, before finally shoving it in his ear as Jarvis parks the roadster.

~*~

Clara adjusts the scarf at her neck, smooths strands of her curls, and smiles girlishly at the young man guarding the kitchen entrance.

“I’ve left my badge,” she says. “And I need to be in early tomorrow, but the new security detail won’t let me through without it. I’ll have to go to administration, but they don’t open until eight. If I’m late again, I’ll lose my position. I was hoping...since there aren’t many people here today, that I could slip in, get it out of my desk?”

Peggy would roll her eyes, but she’s used the tactic a time or two and has no room to judge.

“I can’t let you in, Miss,” he says, resting his hand on the butt of his service weapon and darting his eyes to Peggy.

Clara says smoothly, “Our parents are here to visit and we’ve already kept them waiting. Our brother...we lost him in the war. It’s his birthday. They hate having us so far away.”

Her lip is trembling. It’s a masterful performance, the association of family and work and the war, the fraught way these things tie together. Peggy had thought her beauty a formidable weapon, the brilliant hair and luxurious mouth, the wide dazzling eyes, but these are just tools to catch the attention. The real trick is how all of it alters as Clara shifts from one foot to the other, sudden vulnerability in the way she holds her arms tight to her stomach, her apparent embarrassment at bringing up their loss.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve...” she says hoarsely to her shoes, and even that awkwardness is deliberate manipulation. The young man catching her trying to use his sympathy is the very thing that wins him over.

He succumbs to the temptation to be magnanimous to a desperate and pretty little thing. “You can be in and out in five?” he asks, “It’s my job otherwise.”

Clara nods, smile trembling, big eyes watery and so damned grateful.

It’s enough. In five minutes, the small fire they set in the rear of the garden will have flared up enough to distract the young man.

They slip into the embassy, arm in arm, two sisters focused on one purpose.

~*~

The cafe is a popular destination for Americans, so there’s pie on the menu and the coffees turn out to be a decent drip variety. Howard digs into a slice of apple, but Tony waves his away. He’s already jittery and wired. The smell of the sugar puts him off. Jarvis is in the car, which is parked around the corner nearest the exit the women have identified as the one they’ll hopefully be using.

“Not much used to waiting around, are you?” Howard asks. 

Tony can’t let that stand. “And you are?”

Howard flicks his shoulders, half shrug, half twitch. “Often enough, although, sure, mostly it’s Jarvis. But there’s no one better than Peggy. She’ll keep your girl safe.”

Tony smirks at that, in part because he likes knowing something Howard doesn’t, and because he enjoys the prospect of telling Natasha later that his father is also speculating a fair number of sex farce plots, possibly as a reflection of his own romantic troubles.

It’s when Nat says, “ _I believe I met a friend of yours_ ,” that Tony questions keeping the comm in his ear at all. “ _A Dorothy Underwood? Lovely hair, spoke of you fondly_.”

~*~

Peggy doesn’t react to Dottie’s name beyond a tightening of her mouth.

“It’s certainly a small world,” she says, and taps her ear. “I wasn’t aware that she had an interest in the tropics.”

Natasha is well aware that both Starks can hear the exchange, but she wants Carter off-balance, wants to see how she handles this. Wrung-necked rats, and stolen kisses, and Stark’s existential meltdowns, are compounding a growing sense of dread. Dottie had dangled risk and reward in front of her that first meeting, and her threats are starting to intrude.

Natasha is a little uncertain of the exact metaphor of the message. Is she the rat? Is Sergei? She wouldn’t bet on his continued existence, but the rat’s neck was broken. It was a clean death, at least. That points to her being the rat.

Carter is the cheese, that’s for damned sure.

Carter is stoic and decisive. Carter is a bruiser, a player. Carter is going to forge the agency that issues Natasha’s umpteenth death warrant and then saves Natasha’s life. Carter is a pain in the ass. And Dottie wants her safe, protected. Natasha’s doing her damnedest, but Carter’s not making it easy. She’s determined to poke her nose into everything. 

Natasha has decided that it’s time to push back. Find out why.

Dottie is a key in a lock. Natasha turns that key.

“She asked me to pass along her regards.” She nods at a secretary who clutches files to her chest. The secretary nods back. Sloppy, Natasha thinks. She should have flagged two strange women as out of place.

“Difficult childhood, that one,” Carter says finally. Licks her lips. “I saw where she grew up.”

“Really,” Natasha takes that with a calculated pause. “In an orphanage, I believe?” Oh, so very careful. She’s been fighting against the knowledge that Carter has seen the Red Room, or an incarnation of it, and that her memories are not tainted -- that there are things she can tell Natasha. She cannot let herself be distracted by that.

“They had some rather barbaric training rituals,” Peggy continues, sensing she’s got an advantage to press. “Child rearing has progressed significantly since then. It was almost as if she’d been shackled.”

Natasha looks away. Her memories of her missions, her peers, are spotty but she remembers the dorm rooms and attendants, quiet women with scars on their wrists. This isn’t news, but it is surprisingly painful to hear aloud, an outsider recounting the brutality. She’d spoken to Tony of the pleasure of being seen, but it can be a violation too.

“You have lovely skin,” Carter glances at Natasha’s hands pointedly. “Perhaps Dottie wanted some beauty tips.”

Point to Carter. Though Natasha’s training was excellent; she doesn’t even look down.

“I think she was more interested in my current employment situation,” Natasha counters. “Seems she’d enjoyed her time on the east coast, and was looking to make a permanent move there, or perhaps I misinterpreted.”

Carter nudges her into the ladies room, right before a group of men in suits walk by. They wait by the door until the group passes.

“You must have heard wrong.”

She opens the door, and Natasha follows her up a set of back stairs to the attache’s office.

There’s no light on, but it’s daytime so that doesn’t tell them anything. The door is locked. A good sign, although they’ll need to break in. Carter looks expectantly at Natasha, but she steps back with a sweep of her hand and says, “Oh no, please.”

Carter pulls out her lock pick with a sigh.

Natasha would have opened it with one of Carter’s hairpins. Just for laughs.

~*~

Howard has taken the earpiece out in the midst of the chatter.

“Bored?” Tony digs.

“They’re talking in code, and that’s no fun.”

He’s not wrong.

“Plus it just underlines that your assistant is not, in fact, a garden variety Garden State office girl, but is, in actuality, a spook. And really, I have too many complications right now to fathom what that might mean.” Howard salutes him with his coffee cup, “So I’m gonna trust Peggy’ll tag me in if need be.”

Tony drinks the rest of his coffee, silently judging his father. Dilettante.

~*~

The little camera is finally getting a workout. It clicks with a noise straight out of every spy caper she's sat through with Clint, who loves James Bond and George Smiley, the Pink Panther and Jason Bourne all with equal fervor. Who has watched _Top Secret_ so many times that the one bet she ever lost to him found her occupying the back half of a dairy cow suit at one of Maria Hill's rambunctious Halloween in July parties. Clint loves seeing their lives translated into entertainment by people without any clue as to the realities.

The only part Natasha finds credible are the dressings down from M...and maybe the cars. She indulges in the luxury of wishing he were here. Not just watching her back, cold sniper’s eyes seeing what she might otherwise miss, but providing his own insight, calling bullshit when necessary. Asking her what the hell she thinks she's doing.

Carter flips through the filing cabinet while Natasha snaps the camera over the documents, and the sheer work of it, the stress of listening and skimming and aligning the shots is like a sense memory layered over a dream. Espionage, actual data acquisition these days, is very rarely a matter of physical sneaking, _Lemurian Star_ aside. There’s a throbbing, adrenaline spiked headache burning behind her eyes. 

And then Carter carefully lays an open folder on the desk, fingers lingering on the photo.

Dottie's hair is dark, her big eyes too open, unnerving. Natasha wonders how she ever fit in as normal, but then post-war life took a very long time to veer back into recognizable behavior patterns.

She flips past the photo, expecting a list of crimes and misdemeanors. But it's not a rap sheet. Not a record of a Person of Interest. It's an employment file.

"That's bad," Peggy says, through gritted teeth.

Worse is the rattle of the doorknob. Fuck.

Carter’s eyes flare wide. The obvious places to duck into are all terrible. A key clicks, tumblers fall, and they lunge toward the least worst choice, Peggy grabbing the file and Natasha shoving until they fit into the tiny broom closet, just as the door snicks open.

She doesn’t know how they missed the footsteps, how the Starks missed him entering the embassy. Carter’s intel had described a stable routine, Finley spending Sundays at the track and then the casino.

But here he is, footsteps echoing on the linoleum. Chair casters roll, and then there’s the acrid scent of cigar smoke.

Carter’s eyes squint, nose twitching. Fuck fuck fuck. There really isn’t any room in the broom closet. Natasha presses up tighter to Carter, who does her best to swallow the sneeze, stifling it against Natasha’s blouse.

Technically, since Carter works for SHIELD, this is treason. At the very least, a felony. Natasha’s not sure what sort of legal position she’ll be in herself, but it won’t be pretty.

The sound of the phone ringing carries with it a little sliver of hope, but as Finley rattles off a vigorous reply, Natasha realizes they’re in for a long, long haul.

“Yeah, they called me in.” Finley’s voice is muffled, but he’s a loud man and there’s no other ambient noise. He didn’t switch on the lamp, and despite stifling heat, he hasn’t flipped on his fan either. Finley is exactly the kind of contrary troll to smoke cheap vile White Owls while assigned in Cuba.

Carter’s face squinches up again, and Natasha feels her own sinuses sting. She’s sticky and hot, sweat trickling down the back of her neck. The file folder crinkles in her hands.

They need extraction, but Finley will hear them if they speak. Even a whisper is a risk.

Carter taps her ear, opens her eyes. Natasha can just barely see the motion, the outline of white cornea.

Yes. It’s a good idea. Her normal com link is shitty for non-verbal communication, designed to cancel impact noise, but this is an outdated prototype. Natasha puts her finger over the small comm and taps.

It’s unlikely that Tony is fluent in Morse code, but an SOS is simple for a reason. Howard is a pilot. He’ll certainly know it if he’s listening. Hell, it’s probably in his oral sex repertoire, he seems like the gimmicky type. She repeats the three dits, three dahs and three dits, longing for her phone, or the Stark watch that Bruce and Clint have each held to their mouths on different occasions, saying _beam me up, Scotty_.

“C’mon Stark,” she mouths, and just keeps up the pattern, tries not to think about their other problem.

Carter hadn't gotten to the end of the file. She didn't see the order. An intercepted communique from the Russians, a shot in the dark to their rogue agent. A stab at reconciliation.

_Eliminate the SHIELD operative and all is forgiven_. Carter. That makes two sets of orders.

And underneath, Dottie’s refusal. Suddenly, the dead rat makes so much more sense.

It’s not a threat. It’s a warning.

~*~

Bruce is sitting in the lobby reading the newspaper, contemplating getting another key from the concierge, wishing he could take his shoes off. He flexes his feet, reveling in the soreness, in the hot sting of the blisters in his shoes. It’s been so long since an injury larger than a paper cut had failed to be a crisis. God, he’s tired of it all. He hasn’t realized how tired he’s been -- the constant effort to hold back pain, to not get hurt since it risked contaminating people he cared about at best, the destruction of property and lives at worst. He rolls his ankle, pushes and pokes his petty injuries, taking pleasure in the pain.

This morning was a funhouse mirror reminder of the kind of mood that used to take him often. Before the accident, he’d lash out with it, a hurricane of self-indulgent outrage. Now, he's embarrassed at the excess...but also pleased he took his show on the road. He doesn't want to be seen like that, worse than being hugely green, feral and bare in public.

It feels more naked than his dick dangling loose in Times Square, although he's not anxious to repeat that adventure either.

Maria hobbles jauntily through the lobby arm in arm with Angie, spotting Bruce with a smile. Bruce lets curiosity wash through the itchy seethe, and his smile is genuine. Maria slows and tilts her head thoughtfully in return, waves back.

“Hank,” she says, and her speech is very deliberate. “We are going to go sit in the garden and eat lunch and get soused and talk about romantic entanglements and...bugs.”

“Bugs? At lunch?” Angie draws back with feigned horror, but keeps a gentle steadying grip on Maria’s arm, as she clearly overdid it the day before in the makeshift clinic.

“Bugs in the system; I need to think about revisions if this thing is going to work as more than a torrid affair. I want to complain and brainstorm ‘til my heart’s content.” Still in her early twenties, she’s already a curious puzzle, a piece sliding home in Bruce’s understanding of the vast complicated picture of Tony Stark. “Would you like to join us? Ana is arranging a private table in the garden.”

He digs a hand into his hair, messing up the rough effort at put together he’d started the day with. A foursome of gossip and heartbreak and sex stories does hold an undeniable appeal. Bruce has had a very long morning. Plus, he's starving. “I’d be delighted.”

“Good man. I want all the top brains on this problem, not just mine.” Maria casually brushes a curl off his forehead and gives him a terse nod of approval. She seems to have already made some progress toward soused, but it’s only honed her intensity, taken off some of the sweet and composed filters that smudge her brilliance into something socially acceptable in a woman. 

The sparse handful of off-season Golden Garden Club guests have fled the oppressive humidity of the garden itself, and the little quartet that plays slow tempo salsa for the lunch crowd finishes their set and doesn’t return. When Angie orders a whiskey, Bruce says, “Same,” and he sips at it while he listens to get the mood of the group.

This part of spying is not much different than starting a new job when you don’t exactly speak the language well yet. He can’t fathom why anyone would actively choose to do that over and over.

“What I want to know is...” Maria pauses to get her thoughts in order, “is this a dangerous hobby? Is this a calling? Am I supposed to pretend it doesn’t exist, and wonder whenever he’s out of my sight that he’s off gallivanting with covert operatives? Would I get a call from the office, ‘Maria, hold dinner, something came up?’ Do I _join this crusade?_ ”

Bruce gives her points for sounding both shocked and intrigued.

“Mr. Jarvis and I went through this, and for a while I was content to not know any details. But the moment I knew one thing, I needed to know it all. My imagination was too vivid.” Ana pours herself and Maria another glass of wine; the white she insisted on, because Ana had said it’s the better choice for talks like these. “As for joining in, all I can say is that you may find there are things you yourself will stand up for, despite your plans to stay aloof. Are you willing to test your own mettle?”

“I’ve risen to occasions before. I like being useful, and I’m not afraid of hard work.” Maria says, “I’m more concerned about dying from worry, frankly.”

Bruce nods vigorously, so many hours of abiding in the quinjet crashing in on him all at once with the weight of both his incarnations.

Angie clinks her glass against his in solidarity before turning to Maria. “Here’s what you need to know, before you figure out how you might fit into it. For people like Peggy, like Howard, it’s the right thing to do. And doing the right thing is sacred. It’s the work they’re here to accomplish.”

“More important than anything else,” Bruce says into his drink, which is now a mint julep just as sticky as the humidity.

“I can’t speak for Howard - he’s his own circus,” Angie says, “but for Peggy, when push comes to shove, yes. More important than anything else. And you also have one life, and things _you’re_ here to do. And that’s how you figure out how you might fit into it. Or not, as it turns out.”

Angie tosses back the rest of her whiskey and sets down the glass with a faint smile and sad eyes, displeased but resolved. This is why Angie goes to London, Bruce thinks, to tell stories on stage and film instead of being a controversial footnote in someone else’s clandestine history.

There’s a gust of air that smells of water and ozone, the leading edge of a storm surging across the sky. This is their cue to gather themselves and relocate, Ana clutching the wine and one side of the limping Maria, Bruce hauling the rest of her while Angie juggles doors and drinks.

They end up in Howard's suites, toweling their hair dry and settling in for the afternoon storm.

They install Maria on a couch with a rubber water bottle of ice to alternate between her ankle and hip. She's wrapped in a silk brocade bathrobe that might as well be emblazoned _Howard_ on the back, and is methodically picking off her nail polish, glittery flakes of red falling to the tile floor.

Angie sits on a cushion on the floor, head back in Ana's lap while she weaves a complicated French braid.

Bruce is wrestling with a wave of dissociation, which is kinda being exacerbated by the theme to _I Love Lucy_ coming from the 19” console television in the corner. He’d watched these as a kid, after school doing homework, in those golden couple hours before his dad’s car pulled up and he’d have a moment or two to gauge the man’s emotional state from his tread on the driveway and porch, and whether being present or absent would anger him more.

Bruce had daydreamed of being a Mertz - his realism already stronger than his imagination - settling for the couple that still felt trapped with each other, just not as desperate, not as cruel. The rumpled satin of the title card is a comfort that puts him on edge, he’s safe for now but the clock is running down.

He grips the arms of the chair, tightly woven nubbly wool against his palms, and fidgets to remind his brain where his body is in space. How much space he takes up.

Maybe right now in Dayton there's a fourteen year old Brian Banner trying to evade his own old man, the original berserker Bruce. Maybe that's all life is, mitigating damage, and the only winning possibility is to never give up. To refrain from the indulgence of self pity and making it worse.

Time, of course, is another issue entirely.

He’s been trying to get Tony and Natasha to understand, with little success, that the very question of _is this our timeline_ is beside the point. It’s no one’s timeline.

With every choice, every action, they move through the endless number of multiverses. Each of these worlds are real in a sense, even if they inhabit it for the handful of seconds between when one person stops talking and another person answers.

The take-away from that, for Bruce, is that they are still exceedingly close to their home universe. Out of infinite possibilities, it’s a pretty provincial trip. Bruce suspects the point is about choice itself; with unreliable and incomplete information, with fundamental truths about each of them altered, what actions do they take, what prices do they choose to pay?

On the little convex black and white screen, Lucille Esmeralda McGillicuddy discovers a typo on her marriage certificate, and chaos ensues.

“Pfff,” Angie says, her voice relaxed slower from Ana’s deft fingers weaving her hair. “What’s done is done.”

“This is true, but,” Ana says, “for me, when I got married, this would have been a terrifying complication.”

“I don’t mean to pry,” Bruce says, “but how so?”

Angie drapes her arms over Ana’s legs, cupping her knees through the flounce of her skirt. Ana smooths a palm over her forehead in return and says, “Sometimes we fall in love at the worst possible moment, which turns out to be the best possible moment.”

“Her husband swept her off her feet and out of Hungary just ahead of the Nazis.”

“I still have nightmares about the paperwork, about what it would have meant for us if Mr. Jarvis hadn’t had Mr. Stark as a benefactor to help us.”

“It seems to run in the family,” Maria says, looking at Bruce, “taking on a person as if they’re a cause, or a research project.”

“Getting them on their feet.” Bruce counters, “trying to help build them back up.”

“Hmm.” Maria turns back to the television, where Ricky plots with Fred to convince Lucy that the marriage is indeed in limbo until the certificate can be corrected. A distraught Lucy goes back to virginal singlehood until they can recreate their courtship and remarry.

Bruce watches Maria from the corner of his eye, her thinking face fully engaged as she bites at a cuticle. He wonders if he’s witnessing the first inklings of the Maria Stark Foundation, which was a key player in the global effort to eliminate smallpox, and leverage the green revolution in the sixties. Maybe Maria is the keystone to this Asgardian snipe hunt; connecting this woman to the resources she’ll need to change the world in the twentieth century.

“Poor fellow,” Maria gestures in sympathy with the passionately frustrated Ricky, hoist on his own petard. “I miss sex too.”

Angie straightens up like a spring-loaded ironing board. “I don’t understand, wasn’t that the whole reason you came to Havana? You do know this isn’t television - you don’t really need a license to do that.”

“Yes, thank you, I’d worked that part out earlier. That’s why I miss it now.”

Ana gently yanks Angie closer by the braid, pulling an elastic off her wrist and twirling it onto the end. She explains for Bruce, “Howard has a plan to - how does it go? - to stop giving away the milk for free.”

“But you’re still here,” Angie indicates the suite, which still has Maria's train-case on the bureau and several pairs of both of their shoes by the front closet. “And he’s still here - Mr. Jarvis doesn’t have to kick her out, does he?”

Ana rolls her eyes, “Mr. Jarvis has not been asked to help sort out the rooming situation, nor secure another set of suites for Mr. Stark.”

“No, he’s more devious than Lucy Ricardo.” Maria reaches for the glass from the end table. “No separate beds or tantrums. But also no dessert for either of us. Hence his sudden interest in every damned sport Havana has to offer.”

Angie sucks in a hiss.

“And to make it worse,” Maria sets the glass back down with a clunk, voice warbling, “he’s being so sweet and considerate, so open about everything, so _damned husbandly_ ,” she spits out the words, “it’s making me crazy. I feel crazy.”

Ana tilts her head down to brush stray hairs off Angie’s neck, concealing a proud smile. Tony was right to warn him about Ana being the quiet one you need to watch.

Bruce assumes they’ve forgotten he’s there, so he’s taken aback when Angie swivels her head to ask him, “What do you think, Hank?”

The expectant silence is underlined by Ricky Ricardo going off on a tear in Español laced with scat singing or perhaps hysterical glossolalia, and punctuated by a yokel hotel clerk calling him a spy because he ‘ _knows Russian when he hears it_ ’. The canned laughter roars and Bruce fidgets.

“I’m at a loss here,” Bruce says frankly, “I miss sex too.”

Angie stands and takes his empty glass, dubiously eyeing the wad of muddled mint she hadn’t put into the whiskey in the first place. “And like poor Maria who’s laid up with an injury, you can’t put that energy into sports, either.”

“I run,” he says, “helps with a lot of things.”

“Is it helping you with Clara?” Maria asks impishly, “Or does she run faster than you?”

Angie cackles from behind him at the bar.

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“You afraid she’s too much of a redhead?” Angie hands him another whiskey in a fresh glass, murmuring so the others can’t hear, “still a fellow traveler, as they say?”

“No, I trust her.” Bruce looks at her sharply but she shrugs, takes a seat next to Ana on the couch. “Maybe I’m the one running away.”

“If it pleases you,” Ana says, dubious, but clearly accustomed to showing indifference to the self-destructive streak of a Stark in full pout.

In the moment he looked away, a fresh lump of muddled mint materialized in his glass, turning his whiskey the golden green of a julep. He sighs wearily and sips anyway.

“This is what I thought.” Ana concludes.

“Maria, sweetheart?” Angie calls to the woman not three feet away, curled in a morose lump on the settee.

“Yes, my Angelina?”

Ana snorts into her glass, clearly seeing it coming.

“Whatsay we take on a little matchmaking project, Stark-style?”

“I think a light diversion is just the thing I need to distract me from my own romantic troubles.”

Bruce furrows his brow as all three women pin him with considering stares, feeling a bit like Jonathan Harker.

~*~

It’s clear that the attache Finley knows Howard Stark’s name. Tony hears the scrape of chairs, the rattling clink that suggests refreshments offered.

“Nice looking family,” Howard says, the personable charm that Tony barely remembers coating the words, so fake in comparison to the real warmth that Howard’s been draping over Maria like a blanket.

“I really didn’t want to say anything,” Howard continues, and Finley makes encouraging noises. “Didn’t want to cause an incident, you know. But she could have been killed, my fiancee, and really, reckless driving is one thing but this sure felt deliberate…”

“I’m so sorry Mr. Stark, we’ll look into it. We can have some people stationed at your hotel…”

It’s such an easy con, tell the truth to hide the lie, but Tony’s still astonished. Sure, Romanoff uses it all the time, to distract, to redirect, but he sees now why it’s so familiar, so distasteful to him. He hates to admit how often he uses the technique himself, and he shudders to hear where he learned it.

“No, no, there’s no need. But I was thinking maybe I should report it to the police, except my Spanish is pretty terrible.”

It takes Finley a minute. “Your concierge could help, or perhaps someone else in your party?”

That’s a hint in itself, and Tony hears a muffled tap on the table. Maybe Howard’s hat.

“I think,” Howard says, “it’s a matter of public safety. It might be taken more seriously if someone...official comes with me.”

Tony can taste the fake cheer wrapping the words, feel the big smile tight in his own cheeks. And then he hears a sneeze. And a very, very long pause, until Howard says, “Hay fever. All this rain you know.”

Finley sighs dramatically. “Let me get my hat,” he says. A few minutes later, Tony hears the snick and lock of the office door, footsteps, and another door opening and closing, a clatter of heels which he assumes is all Peggy since Romanoff walks silently even in heels unless she’s going for effect. Then a drum solo of clicks over comms that’s Romanoff giving Howard the all clear to scrape off Finley.

The women get into the car, breezy and bright like they’re being picked up for a date, even if they are sodden from the rain. Jarvis has chewed the cuticle of his thumb bloody, and Peggy puts a very gentle hand on his shoulder.

“Agent Carter,” Jarvis says, and Tony feels that voice in his gut. The way worry and love coalesce with an unspoken reprimand to mean _take care_. “You’ll be the death of me.”

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Jarvis,” she says. “You know I hate to make you worry.”

Tony turns to Romanoff for more, but she just taps her fingers on a file folder and gives him a little shake of her head.

~*~

They find Bruce passed out on the bed, sprawled diagonally. He’s snoring faintly, a little throaty rumble, and smells like bourbon. His shoes are off, and his heels are rubbed raw. One sole sports an angry blister. His right arm is thrust under his pillow, the left dangling off the bed.

“Like hell,” Tony starts, but Natasha puts a hand on his upper arm.

“Maybe give him this one,” she says. “He’s gonna feel like hell in the morning.”

“I feel like hell right now.”

She holds onto the connecting door, and the fleeting look she gives Bruce is very soft. Before he can comment, she turns to him, “Isn’t it your turn to sleep on the couch anyway?”

Tony makes a face, thinks Romanoff is going to leave it at that. Instead she goes over to the bed, crouches down, takes Bruce’s hand in hers and slips off his watch. She winds it and sets it on the nightstand, placing his dangling arm on the bed. He twitches, but settles as she brushes hair off his forehead.

When she moves away, her features are composed again.

“I’ll order some dinner,” she says, nodding her head toward her room. “Unless you want to go downstairs?”

Tony sucks at his teeth and says, “Nah. Let’s eat where we can control the music and no one’s smoking like a chimney.”

He catches that concerned crumple flit between her brows when he plugs in the radio, but then she’s ordering room service in her Clara voice, looking at him like she’s daring him to mention her discomfort.


	10. Taking Care of Business - Monday, Sept. 8, 1952

### CH10 - Taking Care of Business - Monday, Sept. 8, 1952

Natasha stays in her suite until mid-morning, working through the file on Dottie Underwood. She re-translates the intercepts, but that only nets her a little nuance in the sense that the hit on Carter is less of a trade and more a show of good faith. Kill your darlings, in essence. She knows, as surely as Dottie, that even so she wouldn’t be welcomed back as the prodigal.

Natasha is still working when Lur knocks. She swaps out the folder for the order book with her obscured notes in the front and Tony's doodles and mechanical sketches in the back. She lets the girl in to clean, greeting her but returning to her order book like she’s working.

Tony has drawn a swinging pair of fuzzy dice on the inside cover, shaded with green crayon.

The girl is dusting, moving things about on the coffee table, and picks up the newspaper from two days before. She looks from the story to Natasha, curious, and perhaps with something to share. Lur feels a connection, but is wary of stepping over the line into over-familiarity with the guests--even after borrowing the dress, maybe especially after such a liberty. It had come back freshly pressed, faint alcohol trace of the vodka that had been used to clean it, and Natasha’s room now has flowers each day, similar to those in Howard Stark’s suite.

Natasha smiles encouragingly, like she’s welcoming the excuse to set aside work.

Lur asks, “Do you know of this family, Señora? It is my mother’s old neighborhood.”

“Really?” She cradles her chin in her hand, looking to dish. In actuality, this girl is part of her work, these chats and favors like the setting and checking of traps, to catch intel like small prey. “How tragic!”

Lur shrugs, unconvinced that it merits such emotion. “My mother says that Doña Vera showed everyone what happens when you try to step out on your esposa.”

“Step out? Goodness--I was just trying to understand how the family names work,” Natasha confesses, “I was missing all the drama.”

Lur fills her in on the power struggles, the mistress, the by-blow who’s just coming of age and possibly being groomed to take over the business, the fact the legitimate eldest was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, the rumors that the legitimate youngest was not actually a Flores, though Lur’s mother believes this is a slander. She explains the Spanish surname convention of father y mother, “Which makes it easy to know someone’s family, at least officially. And this,” she points out the _vda. de_ in Doña Vera’s formal name, “viuda de means she’s a widow of the Flores family.”

The girl seems to recollect that she’s talking to a young widow, pulling back to ask gently, “Is it true you changed your name when you got married? Do you get your old name back, Señora, or will it always be different even though you are on your own again?”

Natasha opens up a well of loss inside of herself, lets it come through her eyes and change the timbre of her voice. “You get used to being una viuda,” she smiles bravely through it, selling it, hating herself a little for how easy it is, how it even feels real to herself if she lets it. “You can learn to make any name your own.”

Lur looks at her with big brown eyes, a little awe, and more shrewd understanding than Natasha might have expected a few days ago.

This time, though, Natasha beckons, holding up a small clutch when the girl edges close, bashful. “A gift,” she says. The bag is Dior, lovely and expensive. “For your kindness, and for a small favor.”

Lur eyes the present, dubious and greedy.

“I am trying to meet with a friend,” she says, “But I must remain discreet.”

Dark eyes widen with the delight of a secret. 

“There’s a note in the bag. I simply need a messenger to drop off the note.”

~*~

Bruce knows Howard swims early in the morning. It’s an appealing idea, doing laps, cooling off the pounding headache and rolling nausea of the hangover, dulled by water and aspirin powder, but still lingering. He heads to the pool. 

There’s something about Howard that Bruce can’t look away from-- an element of disaster, a future wound back tight into pure possibility.

Natasha’s diagnosis of Howard Stark rings in the back of Bruce’s mind, “He wanted something for so long that when he finally got it, he was terrified of losing it. The only way he could protect Tony from that was to keep him at a distance, try to make him as tough and sharp as he could. And plus, fifteen years from now? Howard’s been worn down by the Cold War and two unofficial real ones, he’s selling weapons and playing politics. He’s not the man we see now.”

It’s nearly mid-day, so he’s surprised to see Howard swimming like he’d conjured him out of his thoughts. Howard gives him a nod and pulls himself out of the pool as Bruce slips in. He offers a brief charming chat about the water and the weather, ending with a ribald joke that leaves Bruce chuckling as he walks away, though it’s more from wry amusement at the ease with which he’s been handled.

All Bruce can see is a man caught between worlds, skilled at navigating it all at arm’s length, and he understands that, and aches for both of the Stark men, for their visions of the world, how damaged it gets.

Bruce swims long enough that sleep and lunch sound equally appealing, and either way the sky is darkening with coming rain. The pool deck has cleared, so he doesn’t expect to find Tony sitting on a lounge chair, fully dressed, elbows resting on his knees.

Bruce towels off, dons his weirdly short robe, and sits in the chair next to Tony to wait him out.

“I’ve decided to look on the bright side,” he says finally, looking up. “Thanks to you.”

Bruce shakes the water out of his ear. “That is...surprising.”

Tony shrugs. “I figure, I need to take a page out of your book, and assume we do have a future.”

Bruce barks out a laugh that feels as bitter as it sounds. “What on earth would make you think that about me, Tony?”

He shrugs again, but keeps going. “You were holding Romanoff’s hand the other day. I saw it. Not just that freak show hypnosis thing, but teenage romance hand-holding. I didn’t even know...well, I wouldn’t have thought she’d be into casual affection.”

Now it’s Bruce’s turn to shrug, try to keep his features still. He can feel water beading and running down his skin, itchy.

“I figure, you either think we’re all gonna die and you’re making hay while the sun shines...or you think we’re going to get home, and you want to get in all the ridiculous mushy stuff on vacation while you have an excuse, before you separate like vinegar and oil, go back to pretending you don’t hold your breath when she walks into the room.”

He starts to protest, but Tony continues.

“In the spirit of the multiverse and making shit up as we go along, I’ve chosen to go with the latter; the summer camp love hypothesis, if you will. My reasoning is that the former is actually far more optimistic - choosing love in the face of death. The latter more in the spirit of self-flagellation that I know and love.”

“Don’t be an asshole.” Bruce gripes, but there’s not a lot of heat.

Tony holds his hands between his knees, and says in a way that sounds like a joke, but Bruce suspects is deadly serious, “How come Romanoff gets all the handsy, hail-well-met? If you’re testing out human contact and all?”

Bruce wants to deny this, point out that he’s touched all sorts of people this week - dancing, passing booze from hand to hand, changing bandages and spooning water into small mouths. Smacking Tony’s hands more than once. Choking a few guys out. 

“Do you want…” He thinks denial might be deliberately missing Tony’s unspoken point. “Do you need a hug?” He knows he sounds like a condescending asshole. He really does.

“Scientific curiosity Bunsen, participant observation,” Tony’s head is reared back, eyes narrow, and that lack of answer is the only answer he’s going to give.

Bruce wishes for Steve, for that big solid hand on your back like being punched by kindness itself. Or Clint, who would have climbed into Tony’s lap and kissed him with aggressive tongue out of spite, to harass him out of this mood. Even Thor with the wrist grabbing, bicep slapping manhandling affection. But none of them are here, and Bruce is ill-equipped to deal with the depths of Tony’s human need. It’s so rarely on display. And yet he loves Tony. He aches for the man, for his fears and desires and the toll this must be taking on him.

So he tries to feel the things that have let him touch Natasha so easily the past few days, that barrier he’s surged past to achieve that contact, the things he’s trying to say about what these two people mean to him.

Bruce turns and leans forward, puts a hand on the back of Tony’s neck and gently tilts him towards his forehead.

“How’s this?” he asks in all seriousness.

Tony wraps a hand around the wrist holding his neck, takes a quick shuddering breath. “Good. Actually, it’s good.”

They don’t linger like that, both a little embarrassed, a little unsettled, but it breaks something open that takes a moment to put away even after they pull apart.

Bruce unfolds his glasses from where he’d stashed them in one of his loafers, “So...your dad just told me an outrageously filthy joke about a humidor…”

“Please don't.”

“Okay.” Bruce shrugs. “It was in Spanish, anyway.”

~*~

The small vase of flowers now resting on Natasha’s side table had arrived with Tony and Bruce, the blooms a strain of lilac, the greens a bush rosemary. It doesn’t match the bright blossoms that Lur usually brings, but she suspects the girl was involved regardless, that it came through the same channel as her note.

Natasha plucks a piece of the rosemary, and rubs it between her fingers as she makes her way towards the armchair, detouring to pass by the settee where Bruce is lounging with his feet up on the arm. She brushes the sprig along his cheek. He takes it from her hand, inhales. “For remembrance,” he jokes. 

“Yes,” she says, and then goes to settle in the arm chair.

She doesn’t laugh, despite the stretched, wry amusement that twitches around her mouth. Remembrance, indeed. Dottie is not a subtle communicator.

Bruce’s eyes are half-lidded like he’s about to nap and Tony flaps a piece of heavy cotton rag stationery at him as he breezes by. This time the note bears a jaunty drawing of an anchor at the bottom, and the invitation is a dock and slip, departure time, and a limerick that Bruce reads out.

“There once was a lady from Cork, who went to sea armed with a fork...” he clears his throat, toes flicking, “Neptune was strident, and waggled his trident - but it’s not the size it’s the torque.”

Tony glares at Natasha for giggling, then snarks, “Hope you don’t get seasick, Bolas.”

“Spearfishing?” Bruce shakes his head, “Are you Hemingway now?”

“Oh not just me, we’re all invited. Although yes, I will be the one risking life and limb to keep Howard entertained.”

“Dick measuring,” Natasha says, mouth a loose smirk.

“Mine or the fish’s?” Tony asks.

“He’s your father,” Natasha counters. “You tell me.”

“Could go either way.” Tony shrugs, but his shoulders are creeping up with tension. “Pack your flippers.”

“I’m PADI certified,” Natasha doesn’t add the freediving or demolitions training, “with specializations in night, drift and wreck diving.”

“Excellent, since I suspect I’ll be a wreck while diving.”

Natasha is unsurprised when he circles back to the topic later that evening, and she lets him talk it out to himself.

“It’s not that I suspect there’s an ulterior motive for taking me out fishing in international waters and strapping experimental early generation scuba equipment on me,” Tony murmurs as he delicately works the needlenose pliers, “it’s that I have concerns about any upgrades he may have made to said equipment that in retrospect might prove more enthusiastic than practical.”

They each have their own enthusiastic projects spread out on the table; Tony’s close-range dart watch, and Natasha’s upgrade of her primitive widow’s bites.

“Mm-hmm.” Natasha leafs through the Radio Shack mail order catalog she and Tony have both annotated with the necessaries Bruce won’t be able to get downtown. She checks to see that she’s transferred every quantity and part number to the ordering page. “Any last requests?”

“I over-ordered, just in case.”

“Then hand me your wallet.”

Tony looks up at this point. “You want to feed the magic wallet to the magic suitcase for component parts?”

“Reciprocity, Stark.” Natasha sighs, “Things disappear from it, too. I’m not going to put the whole thing in there, but I think we need more than a couple bucks to demonstrate good faith.”

He reluctantly digs it out from his back pocket, hands it over, and pretends to be absorbed in his project once more.

Natasha thumbs through the sheaf of traveler’s checks and currency, both dollars and pesos. In the card holder there’s a New Jersey driver’s license for Edward A. Stark, which lists a height several inches taller than Tony, gold AAA membership, registration for a red ‘53 Bel Air Convertible dated a couple weeks prior, and a Kodachrome color photo of Virginia Potts.

Natasha recognizes it as the contact picture from Tony’s phone, simple white silk blouse, complicated cat-eyed smirk.

She can feel Tony watching her from the corner of his eyes as she pulls out the cost of the order, plus shipping, adds a generous gratuity, and selects the car registration and AAA membership papers. She tucks them into the catalog next to the order sheet, which lists Clara Vodaskaya, care of the Golden Garden Club Hotel, Habana, Cuba, etc. She zips it into the suitcase and tosses Tony his wallet.

He flicks it open and shut, quick glance at Pepper. He gets back to work, grumbling, “I should have told him I couldn’t swim.”

~*~

When Bruce comes into the suite that night, he’s bearing a china teapot and cups on a tray. He puts it on the coffee table, then sits cross-legged on the carpet and takes her hand, laying his own in her palm.

She strokes along the pulse points in his wrist.

“I’m sorry we’ve missed the past few days,” he watches her fingers trace his veins.

“You’re still on time,” she says, mouth quirking in the corner.

“Someone wound my watch for me last night,” he murmurs. “A good fairy.”

“Stark does wear those wings so well,” she agrees.

“It’s the skirt and slippers that I most enjoy,” he agrees. “Although I think this fairy might have red hair and a sunburn.”

Natasha curls her fingers around his wrist. He grips her other forearm and thinks that he’d follow her wherever she’d lead him, into danger, or back into himself. He welcomes the ritual tonight, the way their breathing syncs, the soothing feeling of connection, his rage and isolation settling, spreading out into something softer, something livable.

Answerable.

She’s helping him build a way to be answerable, and gratitude runs through him.

If he stays here, he’ll do it alone. When did that idea start to hurt again? At what point between her gun in his face and her hand on his wrist? 

When he opens his eyes, she’s watching him with that quirk of her mouth that says so much, pleased and warm and so real. He wants to touch her lips, feel that complicated smile against his skin.

Their palms still press together, and he’s hyper aware of each point of contact as she taps and slides along his wrist. The thread of connection stretches between them when she lets go, resting her hands on her thighs.

Her voice is very low when she murmurs, “Tea?” 

Bruce hangs there for a long moment, feeling the surge of possibility inside of him, the prompt she’s just given him and the contrary impulses that are his to choose. His hands hover where she left them, tingling. It's the opposite of distance and control; it's clarity, everything ready at his fingertips and none of it urgent. He could slide them into her hair and taste that quirk. He could sweep a hand across the coffee table and launch the teapot like a bomb. He flexes his fingers and reaches for the cups, pouring and handing one to her. Bruce sips along with Natasha, and for once it stays black tea through the whole cup.

They sit side by side on the floor, the millimeters between them a glittering chasm that he’s ready to tumble into.


	11. Dicks Ahoy - Tuesday, Sept. 9, 1952

### CH11 - Dicks Ahoy - Tuesday, Sept. 9, 1952

The Jarvises elect to stay on land to enjoy the peace and quiet, sending the young and the restless off on Howard’s new fifty foot Chris Craft Catalina, _El Cohete_.

“The Rocket,” Howard translates proudly.

“Or firecracker,” Bruce adds in a dry undertone as they board, “fun fact, it's also slang for gun.”

A muscle in Tony’s jaw ticks. “I don’t remember this boat.”

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Natasha murmurs, a dismissive wave at the gold lettering of _Habana_ beneath the boat’s name, “regime change breaks a lot of toys.”

“That shouldn’t be as reassuring as it is.”

“You’re welcome.”

Maria’s gotten enough sun over the past week to bring out the warm gold in her normally pale skin and cast highlights of it into her chestnut hair, but Natasha knows well the cruel magnification of sun at sea bouncing off the water, so she shares her bottle of French sunscreen liberally.

Angie wears a big sunhat when she darts out of the shade of the cabin. Peggy’s sunglasses are ridiculously huge but she’s pulling the look off anyway, unlike Bruce, who appears hungover with his dark glasses and his homburg screwed tight on his head like a bottle cap.

Tony is having a strangely tense discussion with Howard about waterproof watches.

The thing about having decades of spotty memory to draw on is that Natasha knows what she knows, but is often sketchy about when and how she learned it. She’d identified the CIA spooks at the beach in part because they’d swam with their watches on, which in this time frame indicated gear that was very expensive and rare on the civilian market, and their clothes didn’t match that budget.

She hadn’t thought to warn Tony that his backup close quarters weapon, cleverly disguised as a wristwatch, would require explanation if he wanted to take it with him into the sea. The watch of a car dealer from New Jersey, with no skin diving experience or special military training, would surely be ruined.

She would step in with a story about lavish holiday gifts, but Howard has been standoffish with her the last few days despite Peggy’s seal of approval, and she’s not going to push him off the fence about Clara.

Maria is the one who finally cuts through the impasse, “If it were going to break easily, it would have done in the pool the other day. Might be interesting to see how much pressure it can take.”

“Worst case scenario,” Tony shrugs out of his shirt, “it gives me an excuse to buy a new watch.”

Natasha gives him points for using the reveal as a conversation stopper.

The work his real cardiologist has done is impressive. Topographically, there’s just an uneven dimple where the arc reactor housing once was, the grafts of bone and skin covering the hole that should never have been, his organs shifted back and his lungs taking up their rightful space again. Cosmetically, it’s a patchwork mess of gunpowder tattoo, mismatched skin tones, swirls of scar tissue and faint palladium lines in a circle like a fairy ring. His chest hair looks mangy.

Howard ignores it completely, laying the air tank along Tony’s back and strapping it around his shoulders and waist. Maria takes his shirt from his hands with a reassuring smile, one that’s recently seen machete injuries and is pleased to see something so horrible so fully healed.

Tony is downright pale under their combined ministrations, swaying as Howard tightens the buckles.

Bruce echoes Tony’s words from that morning in a whisper pitched only for Natasha, “ _‘I’ve been to space, how bad could this be?’_ ”

“Bad,” she says, getting up to lend Howard a hand with his own gear. She and Maria get them both into the equipment safely, Natasha giving Tony a discreet thumbs-up that his own checks out when she bends to help him with his fins.

“Fast learner,” Howard winks at Natasha, and he’s surprisingly not looking down her top but eyeing the straps of her swimsuit underneath. “Can you swim?”

She looks at the case holding a spare tank set-up and nods, “I can swim just fine.”

“Because _two_ greenhorns for you to look after isn’t asking for trouble at all.” Maria comments cheerily, “Everyone will be wet behind the ears.”

Howard plants his feet, weight balanced and chest out just like Tony when he’s got the bit in his teeth. “I’ve done this a couple times before you know, me and Jacques and Francine. Don’t worry.”

“Oh I’m not worried,” Maria says serenely. “You’ll all dry out nicely in the morgue.” 

Howard thumbs his regulator and concedes, “Point taken.” He takes the chiding as if it were a peck on the cheek, smirking at her. “Pairs it is. Clara can go next, if she wants.”

Maria blows him a kiss before he flings himself backward off the boat.

Tony looks betrayed even through his mask, but honestly, he’s the one who got himself into this in the first place. Natasha flutters her fingers in a wave goodbye as he sullenly clamps his jaw around the regulator and falls after Howard.

“That was…” Angie begins, faltering, “what in the world just happened?”

Peggy is shaking her head, clearly rattled as she stares at Maria, who’s leaning over the rail peering into the water. “She just heeled him like a loyal hound.”

“I’ve never seen someone be so... _lovingly_ mean to him.” Angie closes her mouth and exhales through her nose.

“Who else would dare combine the two things?” Peggy says. “It’s brilliant.”

~*~

Tony is no stranger to spending time with his father in uncomfortable silence. What’s strange is that this silence is uncomfortable because he’s so physically vulnerable, his air supply an ingenious but rudimentary system strapped tight around his naked chest, the Atlantic remarkably clear and cold at depth, and so like space his teeth are certainly leaving marks around the hard bit of the regulator.

A school of hand-sized fish gathers and flits around them like a cloud of sparrows. This is like flying and falling at the same time, but the inertia and momentum are all wrong. He’s been far deeper underwater before, but only in the armor, never his bare skin.

The silence is terrifying, but even through the mask he can see Howard’s eyes are smiling as he pauses their descent. He wraps a square hand around Tony’s wrist, and all Tony can think is that it feels too small even as the short tug is so damned familiar, and then he’s looking where Howard is pointing and the deep dark blue below them gains spots, resolves into a shape of a startling mass moving through the water, just discernible from the outcrop of coral further below.

Tony’s heart kicks as they hover over the whale shark, which lazily tilts and opens its maw like an afterthought, coasting right through the school of fish and filtering them out of existence.

Howard is still holding his wrist, rapt on the leviathan below until it turns for another sifting pass through the scattering fish, and then drifts off into the deep blue again.

Howard gives Tony a thumbs up and leads him down to look at the teeming coral.

~*~

It’s midday, and while Howard and Tony should be surfacing sooner rather than later, the sky is clear and the waters are calm and Bruce is starting to feel like a siesta would be a fine idea.

That alone makes him antsy, makes him stand and stretch and shake it off. Maria is sunning on the foredeck, her yellow bathing suit somehow harmonizing with both her deepening tan and the green biliverdin of her healing bruises. She’s a study in olive and harvest gold. Peggy and Angie are in the galley, debating breaking into the lunch baskets early.

Natasha strolls up the couple steps from the salon to the helm with a glass of iced tea and the U.S. Navy Dive Manual. She crosses her ankles and drops straight down to sit cross-legged on the deck next to his chair, offering the glass.

“You realize--”

“I already added mint as a precaution.” Natasha flips through the manual with the same casual indifference she gave the gossip magazine by the pool.

They finish the glass together. She tilts his wrist to check the time on his watch, which she’d wound and reset at the docks before they left, and pulls the third case of equipment over to inspect it, have it handy.

She offers Bruce the sheet of Howard’s calculations for the dive, which is a grocery list compared to what he would really like to see of Howard’s work.

He's skimming them when Maria shouts, “Peggy!” and comes scrambling up over the cabin roof to the aft deck.

~*~

They’ve been down long enough that Howard has led him nearly back to the boat, their anchor line a steep incline from the bottom upward into the bright blue. He points to his dive watch and depth gauge, reminding Tony of the stop they’ll have to make partway up to decompress for several minutes, before going the rest of the way to the surface.

Tony gives Howard a double thumbs up, nodding vigorously.

He’s a big fan of controlled decompression, because the most excruciating physical injury he sustained in the Battle of New York was not the cracked ribs or the concussion, but the water vapor that had fizzed out into his muscles when a suit pressurized for high altitude flight found itself outmatched by the vacuum of space.

Satisfied that his charge won’t go bolting for the surface, Howard leads the way gently upward. Tony turns to take one last look at the outcrop of reef they’ve explored.

He still spots the frogmen too late.

~*~

Natasha has a gun drawn and is covering Maria while Bruce is still parsing the situation.

“Stay down here!” She wraps her hand in the woman’s bathing suit straps and uses them like a handle to shove her down the couple steps to the salon, then hooks her around to sling her down the next few steps into the aft master bedroom.

On the rebound she dips into her voluminous handbag, handing the Tokarev to Bruce.

Peggy darts up from the galley on the far side of the salon, bristling, but Angie is still down in the fore of the boat. Natasha underhands her bag to Peggy, “Knives. Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to close quarters.”

Peg catches the bag, without looking because she’s focused on Maria talking a mile a minute.

“--came up over the railing like a goddamned pirate, Peggy, he had a fucking _harpoon!_. There's more of them coming--”

Bruce tries to rack the slide but it’s locked, so he checks the sides, then hisses, “No safety?”

“Behave,” she says, reaching over to thumb the hammer from the half-cocked position, freeing the mechanism. “Don’t shoot unless you’re close and it’s clean.”

He nods and racks it, and points it in a two-handed grip down and off to the side. Natasha propels him into the salon past Peggy. “Get Angie, keep them safe.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Even left holding the bag, Peggy Carter in full command is quite a sight.

~*~

In the end it’s all Tony can do to keep the panic at bay. 

A figure in a drysuit and full face mask rebreather pops out from behind the outcrop of coral and throws Howard in an arm lock. Another swoops in to wrap around his legs. The cold refreshing spike of adrenaline hits Tony’s veins and he lunges toward his father, but he moves backward instead.

Strong arms wrap around him too, the rubber of their suits pulling at his bare skin. He sets off his modified watch but doesn’t catch where the darts land.

They’re wrenching his arms behind his back, dragging him down. He can no longer see Howard. Water leaks into his mask.

Tony stops thinking strategically, and gives it everything he has, every newton of strength, every degree of flexibility and more, every move and every dirty trick he’s ever picked up from Rhodey, Happy, Nat, clips of Steve, clips of Hulk. His mask is flooded.

That’s when they yank the regulator from between his teeth.

~*~

Angie is way under the galley table where Peggy had shooed her, and now Peg stands in the salon holding a purse that contains perhaps more combat knives than she’d expected, even knowing that Clara wasn’t all she seemed.

Hank crouches between the coffee table and the inset couches, watching the windows along the low ceiling that look out at ankle level onto the narrow side decks. Shadows flit, and there are ominous thumps from fore and aft.

Out of the corner of her eye, Peggy sees Angie crab walk across the galley and grab the cooking knives out of the block on the counter. At least Maria is now utterly silent where she hides in the master bedroom.

It’s the silence that’s killing Peg, to be honest, having no idea how Clara is faring against this unknown threat, the waiting for more information. Peggy feels a crawling itch to take control of the situation, barely restrained by the practicalities. She rifles through the bag again, but a third gun is apparently too much to ask.

Hank catches her eyes and nods to the flare gun near the entrance. Not much for incapacitation, but it’d be a hell of a bang. It’s a better option than a knife. She stands quickly, grabbing it out of its holder and getting a look out the forward salon windshields.

Gloved hands grab the edge of the fore deck under the railing, and a diver hauls up into view. Peggy ducks down into shadows. The diver’s face mask and suit are mottled blue and black, a rubber hood over his hair, and he radiates menace as he throws his fins onto the deck and slips over the edge, a harpoon gun in his hands. She desperately hopes that Angie stays put under the table, otherwise she’ll be visible through the deck hatches that let sun pour in through the galley ceiling.

Hank swears, and Peggy follows his look through the back helmward window and sees two more divers come over the sides.

This is a bridge too far. Outrage overwhelms caution, and Peggy flies up the steps to the helm.

~*~

All Howard can think of is Maria’s cheery quip about drying out in the morgue, skipping like a record in his brain. The ambush is over in moments, their attackers swimming up the same angle as the anchor cable, but Howard doesn’t follow, can’t follow just yet.

Not until he’s got Eddie.

Howard’s lost a flipper and he has to compensate with his hands, pushing through the water with the same desperation Eddie had unleashed against the men who dragged him off. The water is murky from the bottom being churned up in the fight, so Howard is right on top of him before the blurry scene resolves.

Eddie is clenched tight, eyes and jaw, as his hands work feverishly and clumsily on the severed tube of his breathing apparatus.

Howard doesn’t stop his trajectory, taking that last second to pull his regulator out and wrap his other hand around Eddie’s wrist. His eyes fly open, and Howard jams the piece into the man’s mouth.

~*~

The diver points his harpoon at Peggy, and motions for her to go back down into the salon, ignoring the handheld flare gun.

“Not a chance,” Peggy says.

He gestures again with his weapon. “¡Vámonos!”

“No!” 

He raises the harpoon on level with her eye. 

She takes a deep breath, aims her own. “Drop it.” Language barrier or not, her intent is clear. His laugh is low and cruel, and he handles the weapon too easily to be afraid. That could work in her favor. Peggy swallows hard.

There’s only one flare. She has one chance. 

He flicks the point, impatient, but instead of returning the threat, she fires. There’s a pop and a scream, and she closes her eyes against the bright flash as it catches, preparing for the sting of a bolt in her own chest when she hears a dull thud over the hiss of the flare.

Her eyes fly open, stinging with acrid smoke in the close quarters of the salon.

A knife is buried in the diver’s throat, and he’s choking on his blood.

“That’s three,” Clara says, ducking her head down into the short hallway to the master bedroom, where Hank stands ready, Maria and Angie brandishing knives behind him. “Two more by my count. The anchor is bobbing, I’d guess the real targets are the Starks. How do you want to handle this?”

A tiny part of Peggy hates the rush of exhilaration that runs through her, but she has missed field work. Right now what she misses most about it is her service pistol. “Incapacitate if possible. If not…” she shrugs.

“If not,” Clara agrees, her grin feral as she slips down into the galley and gracefully walks up onto the bench, the table, the high shelf as if they were mere steps, wedging herself against the ceiling out of sight and gently unlocking one of the skylight hatches.

Peggy flicks her hand impatiently at the other three, willing them back into hiding. “Will the doctor be helpful?”

“Only if they piss him off. Angie?”

“Enthusiastic, but not trained, but we’ll keep Maria safe. Get to Howard.”

Clara nods. “Do you have a weapon?”

“There’s another fishing spear in the forward berth, I think.” Peggy is crouched on the stairs to the salon, trying to keep out of sight of all the damned windows.

“Can you get to it?”

“Can you keep them occupied?”

Clara stows her gun like a woman tucking a hankie into her bra, says, “Oh yes,” and in one smooth motion swings the hatch open and launches herself up through the ceiling onto the fore deck.

“And if I had any doubts about her singular breeding,” Peggy mutters to herself as she scuttles to get the fishing spear, “this certainly puts paid to them.”

The war had been a tragedy, but it had taught Peggy who she was in the heat of battle, in the boredom between missions, in the midst of soldiers and spies. That knowledge comes back quickly as she secures below decks and surveys the situation. The boat is big, but there are only a few places to hide. These men are either trying to kill them, corral them, or disable the ship. 

Hank comes up into the salon, stealthier than she gave him credit for, but his face is drawn and teeth bared. She recognizes a fellow bruiser in that look. “They’re barricaded down there, although Maria’s peeved about it,” he says, a little breathless.

Peggy sends him to check on the man with a knife in his throat and a burnt out flare lodged in his chest, and he gives her Clara’s gun. The man had managed to crawl down toward the galley, leaving a trail of blood and phosphorus singe on the carpet of the salon, but Hank reports there's nothing to be done for him now.

An unholy banging comes from the helm. Peggy barks an order for Hank to follow her. 

Another diver is wrecking the console with a wrench. So maybe incapacitation, along with killing. 

“Stop,” she yells, and holds the gun steady with both hands.

The diver raises the wrench. Damn it all. She wants at least one of them alive.

Hank says something to the diver in Spanish, too quick for Peggy to catch. It sounds threatening, but the diver chuckles and swings again at the helm console, cheerfully smashing through the chrome and burled walnut facing to the control mechanisms beneath.

Hank moves towards the man, but a series of crashes and thuds from the roof of the cabin turns Hank’s head. The diver lunges, wrench raised up to come down hard.

“Bloody _hell_ ,” Peggy says, and shoots.

~*~

Tony doesn’t see stars. Stars are twinkly and innocuous. Tony sees his vision being eaten away by glittering black holes, determined to keep fumbling for a solution with every last second he can squeeze out of life. Luckily, he’s used to ignoring a clawing ache in his chest, a screaming spasm lodged between his lungs, so he’s fairly sure he’ll lose consciousness before he sucks in the deep breath of seawater that’s waiting for him just past his lips.

When the hand grabs his wrist, he doesn’t have enough focus to spare trying to shake it off, but it startles him anyway, and then there’s a regulator in his mouth, saltwater and spit and sweet oxygenated air.

Now Tony focuses on trying not to throw up with eighty feet of water between him and the surface. Howard manhandles him with odd gentleness, examining his ruined equipment, closing the tank valve, and patting him down for injuries.

It’s when Tony nudges his father to get him to take his turn on the regulator that he notices another major complicating factor.

His left leg is manacled to the anchor.

~*~

Natasha grapples with the slippery suit covering the man between her thighs. She’s got his mask strap around his throat, twisting it like a garrote but the rubber has too much give and she’s sliding as she pulls.

She’d yanked this guy out of the lazarette hatch, hopefully before he could do much harm to the engines. The radio was already ripped out of the helm, and presumably thrown overboard. They can’t afford to lose the engines as well. She’s annoyed by his tenacity, as she’s kicked his ass across the whole boat and he’s still struggling, rolling across the fore deck as she hooks her ankles for better leverage.

Another diver is slipping stealthily along the side deck, but she recognizes him as the one she’d pummeled back into the sea earlier, so hopefully there aren’t more coming. Señor Sneaky was the first one to board and try to grab Maria, unprepared for her to hop onto the cabin roof and slide across it to the other deck on a sheen of French sunscreen and sheer terror.

She thought Señor Sneaky was unconscious when he hit the water, and she’s not happy with whatever havoc he’s wreaking at the helm. She finally rips the hood off Señor Tenacious, grabs a handful of hair, and applies his face to the capstan winch.

There’s a gunshot, and Natasha re-prioritizes yet again, launching herself toward the helm. She comes around the side deck and Señor Sneaky runs right into the edge of her hand, held at throat level.

Unfortunately, he’d turned to look behind him so she catches him in the side of the neck, and ends up grappling with him instead.

Bruce comes around the other side with a wrench and a full head of steam, but skids to a stop. He’s frozen like in the street when they were being shot at, all furrowed brow and lips pulled back from his teeth. She takes a hard elbow in the ribs from Sr. Sneaky, narrowly misses a vicious head butt, hopes to hell Bruce doesn’t just start swinging without a plan. His eyes are locked on her, but Sr. Tenacious is stirring; she should have given him a few more whacks for safety.

“Stop fucking fighting me,” Natasha grits out, punching Sr. Sneaky in the side of the head and grinding one of his hands between the deck and her knee.

“Lucha conmigo,” Bruce says, his voice a grumble from the chest.

Natasha spares a glance to see that Sr. Tenacious has shoved himself upright with a heavy dive knife in his hand, and is only hesitating rushing at the crazy American because there has to be a catch.

Bruce feints toward him with the wrench, “Vamos, shithead, come on--”

Fucking idiot. He’s a middleweight brawler at best, fueled by ire and some small tutelage in technique, but he’s no physical strategist. There’s a reason the other guy is all about leverage and torque. He does not need to be trash talking with only a wrench and his own mortality to back it up.

“STOP!” blares from above, “¡BASTA!”

It stops the two frogmen in their tracks, stops Bruce too.

Peggy stands astride the cabin roof, feet planted and coral pink sundress billowing in the breeze, bullhorn in one hand and the Tokarev in the other.

Natasha takes the opportunity to disjoint Sr. Sneaky’s skull from his spine. When she rises to her feet Bruce is staring at her, high color on his cheeks, knuckles white on the wrench.

“Can we possibly refrain from killing the lot? I’d like to know what this is all about, actually.” Peggy snarks, bullhorn still on, gun swiveling to cover Sr. Tenacious when he shifts, “¡Basta!, I said.”

Bruce raises the wrench and bellows, “ _¡Haga como se dice!”_ Do as she says!

~*~

Howard keeps a hand on Tony’s shoulder as he takes three deep methodical breaths, then gives the regulator directly back. His hand doesn’t move, even as his eyes constantly track around them. They fall into a rhythm of vigilance and respiration, calculating and silently communing on just how fucked they are.

They could make it up easily sharing a tank, even making the necessary decompression stops...if Tony wasn’t chained to the anchor.

If Howard shed all of his diving weights and left Tony the tank, he might be able to make it to the surface before drowning, but the odds are not great. He’d certainly get the bends, and there’s no telling what’s happening up above.

There’s _no telling_.

Howard Stark is putting a hell of a lot of faith in Margaret Carter just to stay here with Tony, passing the regulator back and forth like a paper sack of schnapps. He doesn’t know his ship is actually armed with three times the number of loose cannons, and Tony hates even those odds.

They will both run out air, sooner rather than later. They still have Tony’s tank in reserve, but with the valve stem damaged there's no way to tap into it at a safe pressure.

Howard begins to gesture and pantomime, bending down to scrawl a diagram in the sandy bottom of the ocean. Tony nods, and they settle in for the long haul almost lackadaisical, aiming to relax as much as possible to conserve their resources while they work.

Tony unclasps his watch and uses the buckle to pry open the back, pulling out a spring that he uncoils into the shittiest lockpick ever attempted.

Howard starts tinkering with the sabotaged hose and regulator.

~*~

The frogman left alive is trussed up in the cramped bunks jammed into the forward berth. He’s been stripped of his mottled blue India rubber drysuit and lies sweating in his skivvies. The rebreather is a fine piece of equipment, but damaged in the melee.

Natasha steals his flippers.

Bruce shadows her, but she’s not concerned since he’s the only one besides her not shouting. He’s not even bothering to pick up the clothes she’s discarding in her wake, instead his hands follow hers to tighten down each strap of the scuba gear, the way she’d double-checked Tony earlier.

There’s a pneumatic harpoon gun tucked under his arm, but as she reaches for it Bruce cups her jaw and lays one on her, lips parted and inhaling deeply through his nose like he’s not going to breathe until she comes back. She shoves at his chest while grabbing the handle of the harpoon, discarding him like a scabbard. He bounces back with alacrity, hands up in appeasement, tongue darting over his lower lip.

“No distractions,” she says, but he’s already handing her the mask. She spits in it.

~*~

Howard has only succeeded in cutting himself trying to use the dive knife as a multitool. Tony has bent the hell out of the spring wire to no effect. Even though they both know they don't have the leverage or buoyancy to bring the anchor up with them, they also both itch to try it anyway, and also both refuse to attempt something so stupid in front of the other.

Tony is also not thinking about the fact that they have a rather wickedly sharp dive knife, and enough extra webbing for a tourniquet. That’s Plan Z, let’s leave it at that.

Howard has gotten bored with checking their surroundings, and is now using his spare moments to stare up at the angle of the anchor line, even though the boat isn’t exactly visible with so much water in the way. Tony is doing a sweep around them, wondering what Howard’s take on Plan Z will be when the time comes.

Howard shoves the regulator at him and swims straight up.

Tony’s vision is still terrible. He’s been catching bubbles in his mask so it’s no longer flooded, but his eyes burn from the seawater. His chest burns from the panic clawing its way out again, fear and desperate anger, Howard haring off without a look back.

He doesn’t even have the distraction of trying to call Pepper, or ignoring the buzz of her trying to call him. Reaching out and failing. Better than trying to figure out what to say. Her picture in his wallet is eighty feet above him where his friends might be dying, where his mother might already be dead. He’s here to make things better, to set things right, not to watch helpless as the world burns in front of him.

He’s losing control of his breathing. It’s because Howard isn’t there to pace him. It’s because he’s afraid. He still has the webbing, but Howard took the dive knife.

There’s movement above him, two figures resolving from the bright blue.

Natasha Motherfucking Romanoff, a vision with a harpoon gun.

Tony hands Howard the regulator, falling back into the rhythm. Natasha hands Howard the gun with a sharp warning gesture.

They both watch her loot the bodice of her swimsuit for a sliver of metal, and turn upside down to work the manacle lock close up. It opens like she’s Hermione Granger. 

She grabs the tank from Tony’s busted gear. Howard gives Tony’s raw ankle a quick once-over, and the group a thumbs up.

Natasha leads the way as they slowly ascend to the decompression point. She hands the tank to Tony, stripped of the hose assembly. Howard has his hands full with the harpoon gun and is distracted by sharing his regulator with Tony, and checking the depth gauge besides.

Natasha unbuckles her own tank and smoothly shoves her regulator into Tony’s mouth during their accustomed switch-off, pulling the bare tank from Tony’s grip.

She only has fins and a shit-eating grin as she taps Howard’s watch and flashes him an open palm twice. Ten minutes decompression before they can rise the rest of the way.

Howard’s expression is a mixture of outrage and delight, fumbling his own regulator back in for good as they watch her goose the valve a few times to let out a cloud of bubbles, then catch a lungful straight from the tank.

Natasha waves coquettishly and bolts for the surface.

~*~

The yacht is new but the scotch in the galley smells like it might have been kept in an old coffee can on deck for a decade. Howard gulps at it anyway, until it finally overpowers the taste and smell of drowning. He picks the ragged skin from the swollen cut on his hand, needing something to do and there just...isn’t anything more until they get into port.

The damage to the helm was cosmetic, the workarounds easily rewired while the ladies auxiliary stowed the bodies and clever Clara went back into the water and inspected the keel. Eddie had gone down into the lazarette and pronounced the engines unmolested.

Now it’s all over but for the arguing.

Clara is at the kitchen table, looking up over the wall into the salon where Hank has finally pinned Eddie down to check him over.

Howard pulls the towel more tightly around his shoulders and turns to face her. “Not so much a nice secretary from East Orange, are you?” 

“That would be telling, Mr. Stark,” she says, but winks at him. 

“I told Peggy I was unimpressed with the new hires. How’s that for irony?”

“Par for the course, I’m afraid.” Clara says it like a joke, but her eyes have lost the twinkle.

Peggy comes up the stairs from the forward berth, holding the rail as the boat rocks to and fro, the seas decidedly rougher. She catches Howard’s eye, shakes her head. “He won’t talk.”

“So I gather.” He picks up the glass again.

Clara puts a hand on Peggy’s shoulder, comfort or reassurance, and then says, still as warm, still as pleasant as if they hadn’t just been ambushed and nearly killed, “Perhaps I can chat with him. I may be able to change his mind.”

Peggy just nods and do-si-dos around her in the tiny galley, giving her approval and access to the stairs. From where he’s jammed against the stove Howard can see Hank watch her go, mouth drawn. Howard sees he was wrong about that dynamic as well, though Maria was spot on.

A few minutes later, Maria comes down into the galley with Angie. Angie is still clutching the knife block like a teddy bear.

Maria takes Howard’s glass and sniffs, wincing. She downs a large portion and coughs, then hands it back to him and rubs his shoulders. “That’s horrific,” she says, cupping the back of his neck with a gentleness that gives him a dangerous hope. He leans into her touch anyway, and she follows him up to the helm.

This far away, the silence from the forward berth is less unnerving.

Hank looks back down the stairs, “Maybe I should see if she needs help.”

Eddie catches his wrist with a head shake.

“I think she would have asked, if she’d needed help,” Peggy says, with the diffidence the English use to suggest you’re fucking bonkers.

Clara returns fifteen minutes later.

Howard is at the helm with Maria draped protectively over his shoulders. The rest are gathered in the salon, Angie curled in a corner of one couch with Peggy’s hand resting on her ankle, Hank sitting on the floor with his back to the wall so Eddie can stretch out on the other one.

“You should reach out to your friends in the CIA, if you have any,” she says to Peggy, flicking her eyes to include Howard through the open window between the salon and the helm. “I don’t think we want to leave this with the local authorities.”

“Is he…?” Hank’s voice is quiet, but it carries. They all tense, like they can imagine the answer to Hank’s question, even though Howard’s pretty sure none of them, aside from her friends and perhaps Peggy, know what Clara is really capable of.

“He’s fine, but uninterested in returning to those who he was working for after spilling their secrets.”

That’s a bad sign, and Howard takes Maria’s hand in his. “When we get back to the hotel,” he says, “We’re going to pack our bags, and put you on the next plane.”

“Like hell you will,” Maria says.

Angie snorts and the whole boat erupts into chaos.

~*~

Natasha lounges with deceptive ease on the bow, with the harpoon gun resting next to her. She keeps eyes on her captive through the open skylight hatch that looks down into the forward berth.

He’s still tied up, mutinous expression on his face, but cowed too. He keeps squinting up at Natasha and looking away again, like he’s not sure what happened.

Bruce comes to sit by her, and she shifts her weight slightly so her knee is pressed against him. Her hair is pulled away from her face, tendrils curling wildly at her hairline, and he brushes his knuckles along her temple.

“What did you trade?” he asks her softly.

“Nothing I couldn’t afford to lose,” she says, and closes her eyes briefly at his touch.

It’s quiet up here, a marked contrast to the shouting below deck.

“We should get Howard up here to steer this thing home,” he says. “Or Tony, but I’d rather he stay horizontal for now.”

“I can steer it,” she says. “Let them keep fighting.”

“Of course you can,” he presses his lips to the crown of her head with a smile, taking in the sun and salt, the lingering damp from the ocean, the fear of losing her and the unsettling pride in her ruthless lethality.

He’d watched her snap a man’s neck, clean and graceful, with the sickening gristly pop of a disjointed turkey leg. And he had reveled in it, his monster howling at how her swift aggression thwarted the attack, how brutally perfect she was at keeping them safe.

But that's not exactly new, is it? Normally he’s the other guy when she’s at work, a partnership of two contrasting killing machines, the targeted and the wholesale. Watching her in his own skin, Bruce still felt a thrumming instinctual pride that leaves him satisfied, dazed, and a little sick. 

He doesn’t wish death on anyone, but neither does he feel bad for any fool who comes at her expecting a different result.

She holds her own, against the world. Against him. The desperate comfort of that feels like a warm bath, a soothing heat. A promise and a temptation. He wraps an arm around her waist, and she scoots to fit her back to him, pressed tight as the waves lap at the bow of the boat.

~*~

At the dock Howard takes point with the Harbormaster, while Peggy negotiates the hand-off of the casualties and the prisoner when the authorities arrive. The authorities in this case are a mutually surly group of local police, governmental types, and a couple bland American suits led by Finley.

Finley is scrupulously deferential to Margaret Carter, though his eyes cut constantly to Howard Stark until Carter jerks the leash with a few gentle comments that mean nothing to anyone else but drain the blood from Finley’s face. Tony catches Natasha’s smirk, and he wonders if she gets the references or if she’s just fangirling.

Tony rides back to the hotel with Howard and Maria, sprawled in the backseat just like old times, the tension thick between them, his presence an afterthought.

Or maybe he’d never been an afterthought, but someone they were trying to keep their own conflict from spilling onto. It had never occurred to him to look at it like that before.

Maria finally breaks the silence, “I won’t just go home, ordered around like I don’t know my own mind.”

Howard’s “Yes, you will,” shuts down any further discussion.

Tony marvels at how amateur they each sound, before years of perfecting their arch indifference and their speaking through clenched teeth respectively. The anger and fear break out into a quiet and intense argument right there under the awning of valet. They don’t seem to notice Tony still standing there, or Bruce coming out from the hotel lobby and herding them all inside.

Tony aches to follow Howard and Maria into their suite, hear the end of their discussion.

Bruce gently manhandles him into their room instead, steering him to the settee and going to strip a blanket from the bed.

“She has to stay,” he says to Bruce when he flings the blanket around him, “Howard can’t just send her home. It’ll fuck everything up.”

“We know that certain theories postulate that history will hew towards the same results, Tony.” He's already got the doctor bag open. “There's no reason to think that if she gets on a plane tonight, you disappear. Or that we get stuck here forever.”

Tony pushes away the stethoscope.

“No.” Bruce keeps a firm hand on his shoulder and orders, “Let me.” 

Tony looks up, startled. He’s heard Bruce cranky with fatigue, with irritation. He’s heard the edge of ire and outrage. He’s never heard this tone, absolutely an order. Bruce continues, “Contrary to popular belief, watching you almost die never gets easier.”

There’s a brittle edge to his voice that might read as uncaring, but after the car ride he’s had Tony gets that it’s anything but. He’s just...surprised.

He stops protesting, just curls his fists around the edges of the blanket and lets Bruce listen to his heart, take his pulse and blood pressure, use the penlight to check his pupils.

“I want you to drink all of that,” Bruce points to a pitcher of water. “And take a bath.”

“I’m not in shock.” He doesn’t want to be babied.

“Your blood pressure is low, you’re still clammy, and your pulse is erratic. Some of which is normal for you post-surgery, but I’m still--”

Tony puts his hand around Bruce’s wrist. “You read the post-op reports?” He didn’t think anyone but Pepper had even glanced at those. He’d been fine. He told everyone he was fine.

There’s real anger there now, brusque as Bruce shoves tools back into the bag. “Of course I did. I wanted…” There’s a long awkward pause while Bruce fiddles with the bag like he’s going to zip it and then doesn’t, finally meeting Tony’s eyes.

His gaze is a dark, muddy green, but Tony doesn’t think the rage is directed at him.

Bruce takes a deep breath. “I wanted to be able to help, if I could. And if I couldn’t, I wanted to know what to expect, what to do. Who to ask.”

It feels big. It feels...powerful. Intimate. A little scary, to have this friendship proven in the face of near death. It’s not like he needed declarations of love from Bruce, but well...goddamn it, now he’s gonna get weepy.

“Jesus, Melonballs, you could have told me that. We could have avoided the awkward hugging.”

“Fuck you,” Bruce says, cinching the blanket tighter around Tony’s shoulders.

“If she leaves tonight, it changes everything,” Tony says softly. “I know it like you know your own heartbeat.”

“Then trust your mom, Tony. Trust that Maria Carbonell can figure out what she wants, whatever that might be.”

Tony finds it darkly funny that this was Maria’s argument in a nutshell.

~*~

“You missed our date, Nata.”

Dottie is sitting on her bed, coincidentally in the same spot the dead rat had been laid.

Natasha is finally clean of blood and seawater and sunscreen. There are a number of responses she could make to Dottie’s statement, but she ignores it instead.

“Lur is yours.” She tilts her head at the vase of flowers, as she blots her hair with her towel. Her elbow throbs and her palms are raw. She feels water sloshing through her sinuses.

Dottie keeps her prim expression, but her mouth curves up a bit in acknowledgement, and that’s when Natasha pushes.

“Well, she _was_ yours. But apparently, that relationship isn’t exclusive. Going freelance, it seems.”

That bow mouth tightens and Natasha thinks, _sit with that, why don’t you_. She feels bitter with burnt out adrenaline, healthy rage.

She’s hungry and her skin feels too tight, energy in her bones that her body can’t contain. She needs to bring her best self to this conversation, but the best part of Nataliya is different than the best of Natasha, and it’s a struggle to find that core of cool slippery intrigue when what she wants is a fight, or a sandwich, or a long giggling romp of heat and touch.

All three. In that order.

But instead here’s Dottie, rising to her feet with prim fingers and murderous intent. Natasha recognizes the ghosts of her own training in Underwood’s dancer's grace, her movements fussy and alien and completely silent even in heels on the mosaic tile not covered in carpet.

Tension fists in Natasha’s belly. The attack today was coordinated and deadly. A few minutes longer and Tony’s worry over his parents’ romantic foibles would have been moot. It was a deliberate strike. But not against Natasha.

It didn’t take much to figure out that Lur had tipped their attackers off.

She doesn’t think Dottie had anything to do with it, but she’s here anyway. And Natasha just doesn’t have the bandwidth to deal with Dottie right now.

Stark is freaking out. Bruce is drawn taut with worry, and these other people, these ghosts she’s become so very fond of, are moving around each other like strangers as they sort out whether their lovers and friends will be part of their futures or just treasured memories. 

Howard has already declared his intention of sending Maria and the Jarvises off on a commercial flight as soon as seats are available.

And here she is watching Dottie pick up and put down all of her things, even opening the magic suitcase.

Natasha would like to make her stop. She fists her hands, and then breathes in and out, lets them fall open.

“Lur’s been yours as well,” Dottie says finally, not looking at Natasha. “She’s a smart cookie. Or thinks she is. We’ll see.”

“Her shifting loyalties almost got several people killed today,” Natasha says. “Including Peggy Carter. You don’t have a problem with that?”

Dottie opens a bottle of perfume, sniffs like a memory is stirring. “Like I said, we’ll see.”

“What does that mean for Lur?”

Dottie puts down the perfume. “Lur’s friends and my friends might be friends.”

It’s not what Natasha expected, and she tosses her towel onto a chair. “Do you still have friends, Dottie?”

~*~

Angie has gone to pack, face pale and mirthless. She hadn’t even protested, just looked at Peggy with a sense of betrayal. Maria aches for her, and for the first time she resents the influence Peggy Carter has on Howard’s life.

This fight should be between her and Howard. Maria squares her shoulders and ignores Peggy standing off to the side. “I won’t be sent home like a child.”

“I can’t protect you, Maria,” he sounds so shaky, and in fact his hands are trembling as he winds a handkerchief around the cut on his palm. “I can’t bear the thought of you hurt.”

Peggy interjects, “It’s too dangerous.” 

Maria glares at her but she keeps talking.

“This isn’t some palace intrigue or exchange of information. Today’s attack was calculated, and pointed, and we’re lucky we survived.”

“You don’t get to make decisions for everyone, Peggy. No matter how much you think you deserve to.”

Peggy winces but holds Maria’s gaze, and she doesn’t see superiority or high-handedness. She sees pain, and the same desperation radiating off of Howard. Maria wilts.

“I won’t be sent away,” she repeats, but it’s without heat now. “If I leave, Howard, that’s it.”

“Maria--”

“Don’t you understand? How would this work if you can’t see me as a partner in this too?” The last thing Maria wants is another afternoon like today. But as she sees things, her options are to stand and fight this fight with him, albeit in her own way, or to be stashed away like a porcelain doll too precious to be played with. “If you can’t let me help you bring about this future you see, that I see too, then what would be the point of a life together?”

She very carefully crosses the suite, opens the door to the bedroom, and closes it behind her. Then lets herself fall apart.

~*~

“You’re alone,” Natasha digs, feeling unkind.

Dottie’s smile is sickly sweet. “We’re always alone, Nata. We were raised that way. We _killed_ all of our friends.”

There’s something shimmering in Natasha’s vision, a sense of how all of these patterns are coming together -- double crosses, lures and betrayals. Natasha is a golden shining example of the best of the Red Room. Dottie is the worst. In another definition, the inverse is true.

Natasha has orders to eliminate Peggy Carter. It is not an order she will follow. The unspoken real target - bring in Underwood - is another mission she will fail at.

The Soviets disdain American conventions; in this case, two strikes and she’s out.

Dottie is here because she’s nervous, not for Carter, but for herself. Lur’s betrayal of her to the Cuban factions has come as a surprise. Such is the danger of hubris, Natasha thinks. The risk of trust. 

“In the morning,” Natasha says. “We will figure out a plan. I have my orders…”

“I had a job,” Dottie says, “But I didn’t wish to keep performing it. Now…” she shrugs.

“You’re not here to threaten me again?”

Dottie makes a show of scuffing the toe of her shoe, the guilty sway of a child caught out and trying to bluff through a smile. “You saved them. Or so I hear. Carter. Her friends. Her...good friend. That duty is over.”

Fuck, Natasha thinks, it’s really, really not.

“I still have orders about Carter,” she says softly.

“I know,” Dottie says, “but that’s not your only duty.” She holds up a film canister, similar to one Natasha has stashed in the suitcase. “A final gift from Lur.”

She meets Natasha’s gaze, and holds it, cold and honest, unflinching. Broken only by a knock on the door. Dottie turns but Natasha already recognizes the sound, the way Bruce knocks like a courtesy and a question.

The knock comes again, and then Bruce’s voice, soft but not hesitant, saying her name. Dottie’s sly look is yet another travail in a day filled with them.

But her name in Bruce’s mouth...that doesn’t get old.

She feels it run through her, imagines him saying it in her ear, pleasure firing her synapses, coursing through him. Damn Dottie Underwood. Damn Peggy Carter. Damn the Red Room and everything they took, and everything they keep taking.

“Is that my cue?” Dottie breathes in a whisper, face lighting up with a smirk as she steps silently to the window, “Exit stage left, pursued by Borya...”

It’s the first piece of humanity Natasha has seen in her. It seals her resolve. She pitches her voice toward Bruce, eyes on Dottie. “Just a second.”

“Tomorrow,” Natasha says to her, and means it.

Failing to kill Carter will have consequences. For the girl Natasha was, it will result in rewritten memories, in Moscow harboring doubts about her talents and loyalties. That action will never be stricken from her record. Assignments will get worse, more dangerous, she'll be put in the line of fire because she'll be seen as expendable. She’ll die in a handful of years unless she can prove her value, earn back trust. 

Failing to bring in Underwood, however, will be a statement. One that will result in a more permanent, rapid eradication.

A failure to utilize her skills would be one thing, making the conscious decision to let a Red Room graduate remain a free, rogue agent? That’s an act of cunning and choice, representing independent moral judgement-- everything that’s been bred out of Natasha. 

The truth is that she’s dooming her past self. Likely her present self. She can live with that.

But she’ll be damned if she doesn’t get a reward for this hellish choice. 

“Tomorrow,” she repeats.

Dottie leaves by the window, and Bruce comes in through the door.

~*~

Bruce has showered, his hair still damp. He’s wearing the white linen shirt she likes so much, open at the throat. He’s tan from the week of sun and indulgence. She wants to bite at his neck, lick the hollow of his throat, wrench him open, hear him keen her name as she claws at the soft hair on his chest.

He’s saying her name, and she knows she looks feral. She feels feral.

He shuts the door and comes towards her, hands out like he’s calming a startled animal, and it makes her laugh.

“Natasha,” he says, and there’s such goddamned kindness in it. What has she ever done to deserve that kindness? She doesn’t know, but she wants to revel in it, roll in the way he looks at her. 

She’s going to convince him to drown her in that look.

“Are you okay?” His hands are on her, no hesitation, just stroking her hair back from her face, tracing down her arm, looking for injury, for explanation, and Natasha puts her hand on his chest. Closes her eyes.

Bruce curls his fingers around her hand, and the tick of his watch echoes his heartbeat thudding through her palm.

She whispers like a wish, “Don’t say no.”

When she opens her eyes he’s shaking his head, but it’s because she’s not making sense. She knows she’s not making sense. She brings his hand close, and he turns his wrist for her to wind and set his watch like this morning.

Instead, she unbuckles the strap.

He sucks in his breath, eyes dark suddenly. She slips the watch into her pocket.

“Natasha,” he breathes again, “we…” 

Her own heart kicks in her chest as he hesitates, and she kisses him to shut him up, to forestall the end of that sentence, to shift the timeline to one where he says yes. It is the longest moment of her life. Of this new life, however long it may last.

Then his mouth opens to her and his hands dig into her hair, and she’s clawing at his biceps like handholds to pull herself up closer. The kiss turns vicious and beautiful. He nips at her lower lip and she moans, so wanton, scraping her nails down his nape and under the loose shirt collar, his skin hot and smooth.

He tugs her flush to him, clutching at her back, and she wants to crawl inside him, wants him inside her, his weight crushing her, this heat pinned under her. She’s on fire, breathless. He bends to pick her up and she gasps with laughter and surprise and shaky desire.

He’s off balance, can’t get a good grip because he’s focused on the kiss. She hooks her heels and leans backward, pulling him into half a spin and tumbling them onto the bed in a tangle of need and desperation.

She grips the opening of his shirt and rears back just for a second. The marbled green of his gaze leaves her twitching, panting. But she needs to see him, to know he wants this, isn’t giving in to suggestion. She doesn’t want to lead, she wants to meet him in the middle.

His big hand cups her cheek, and he presses a knee up between her thighs. He’s hard, grinding against her and she fights back a moan. He stills and she whimpers.

“Why?” The green has been replaced by his own dark brown, soft under a furrowed brow. He’s smart enough to draw some reasonable conclusions, and she can tell by the fine tremors under her grip that he’s done so, that he has an inkling he might be a last meal.

She tells him the truth, if not the whole truth, “I want to.”

It’s enough. The kiss is slow this time, deep and drugging and she licks into his mouth. She’s hot all over, body tingling, itchy with desire. This languorous, lush kiss is short-circuiting her brain, and she wants more. She bites down on his bottom lip, and he groans, thrusts against her.

Natasha takes it as a sign and tugs as hard as she can on the throat of the shirt, buttons flying everywhere as she rips it open.

Bruce catches her eyes, an indulgent crinkle around his own.

Her giggle is matched by his bright, boisterous chuckle, which rumbles through them both even as his hand slides under her skirt. Interrupted only by breathy gasps as his nimble fingers push aside her silk underwear, as her own delve into his fly, the laughter still rides, like foam on waves, as she clutches his forearm and arches against his mouth on her neck, until light breaks behind her eyes and she shudders with breathless release in his arms.

~*~

Tony lays awake in the dark. The room is stuffy, but he keeps the blanket on. When he closes his eyes, the green dots of asphyxia dance in front of him, and his lungs contract with a last desperate gasp for air. He loses time, his sense of place.

The cold of space and the depth of the ocean feel the same, both closing in. Except this time he’s left with the vision of Howard reaching for him, his grip slipping.

It’s not even a nightmare, more an image he can’t shake.

He waits for Bruce to come back, and is partially relieved when he doesn’t. The oppressive worry is a comfort, but also a thick, choking obligation. He shrugs deeper into the blanket.

Tony used to live a life free from anything but his own wants and needs, the occasional lure of his friendships and his creations anchoring him to the world. Now these connections rest on his shoulders, holding him down like diving weights. He finds he likes the pressure, likes the sensation grounding him, but manly hugs or not, he’s not sure he wants to field the type of compassion bound to arise from scrubbing his face free of tears and snot.

He gets up and locates the second blanket stashed in the closet.

The extra weight helps, and so does the sweat coating his body like an extra skin. It’s the closest thing he can get right now to the feel of the suit.

~*~

That look on Natasha’s face had been feral and wanting, beautiful, and if she’d just been warm and needy he could have said no. But that look? He has no resistance to it. No longer wants any.

Bruce knows that look. It means endings. It means sacrifice. It means Natasha walking into a monster’s den, no plan for an exit. He doesn't plan on leaving her alone.

But right now she’s naked and at ease, her hair drying in riotous curls more from sweat than the shower hours ago.

Bruce breathes her in, feeling needy and decadent himself as he skims fingers over the bruise blooming on her shoulder, the suckled bite on her breast, the wounds of war and love. He’s already checked her fingers and toes, tested, tasted the hollows behind her knees and the curve of her ass, brushed his mouth along hers with fingers on her carotid, and finally pronounced her unharmed from the hijinks on the high seas.

Now he’s moved on to examining for internal damage. "Your memories are more clear, aren't they? About who you...were."

She twitches with a flash of annoyance, which he tries not to find amusing. She keeps underestimating his ability to read her. She nuzzles into his belly, nipping at the skin, but his gaze is as steady as his palm curled around her neck.

Bruce is not immune to her teeth on his flesh, but he's not derailed either.

She sighs. "Some of them. Yes."

He waits for her to elaborate. 

"The era appropriate ones. Not whole but... More."

“Is that…” he draws a finger along her knee, searching for the phrasing he wants. She waits him out. “Is that the cost, do you think?”

She mouths at his hip, sliding down to the hollow, breathing in the scent of his sex, his skin. He rolls to his back and she bares him, rubs her cheek on his thigh.

“Maybe,” she says, and that tells him it’s not. She takes him in hand, and he moans and digs his fingers into her hair.

“I should get back,” he mumbles, and his hips twitch.

“Stark can wait,” she says. She’s taking her time, like she doesn’t know when she’ll get another chance.

~*~

Peggy slips into bed and is relieved when Angie pulls her close and wraps around her, arranging the sheet with a sigh that’s far more comfort than judgement.

“Maria agree to leave?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” Peggy finally admits after a long silence. “I left Howard to sort it out.”

“Coward,” Angie teases.

Peggy presses her face into Angie’s neck, still waiting to be pushed away, because for as long as they’ve been dancing along this edge she knows now they’ve irrevocably fallen off, and barely escaped with their lives.

Angie rolls over instead, tucking Peggy more solidly against her neck and drawing her hair back. 

Peggy says, “Yes,” so quietly that she doubts Angie can hear her.

Soft kisses press against her temple, and Angie’s voice is low and husky, desperately serious.

“Never.”

~*~

The rain pounds so hard against the window that it wakes Bruce up. He hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep. He should check on Tony, go back to his room, he should…

Natasha is sleeping on her belly, her hand on his chest in an open curl like a survivor washed ashore. When he stirs, she shoves up on one arm, blinking and reaching to the side table for her gun. “What is it?”

He brushes her hair off her shoulder and coaxes her down, mouth along her neck. “Shh,” he says, “it’s just the rain. I didn’t know…”

He feels the tension flow out of her, and he scoots back down to snug up to her warm back, a hand on her belly.

“Sleep,” he says, awed when she murmurs an assent, already growing loose and lax in his arms.

~*~

“Wake up.”

Howard grunts and curls into an even grumpier lump on the couch.

Maria sighs. It was the whistle of a snore through his nose that woke her up, likely about the time he’d finally dropped off to sleep. She’d sat up and watched dawn lighten the room like ash whitening, the rain battering the shutters as she watched Howard breathe. She’d slipped out into the sitting room and ordered up some breakfast, which sits cooling. The tropical storm has grounded all the flights going out of Havana for the next twelve hours.

She perches next to him, drapes herself over him as he stirs, sits up, and wraps his arms around her in turn.

“You’re right,” he sounds like he’s been eating glass, and his eyes are bloodshot, “I can’t order you to leave.”

Maria pulls in a deep breath and lets a couple tears drip onto his back.

Howard turns his head to kiss her neck at the edge of her hair, his body locked with tension as he presses his lips as if to memorize her skin, her scent.

“I thought maybe if I pissed you off enough, you’d leave anyway, and be safe. Even if you left me for good.”

“That’s a terrible idea, Howard.”

“Seemed a fair trade.”

“Shows what you know. I get nothing out of that deal except more worry.”

“You shouldn’t worry about me.”

Maria laughs, but it sounds more like a sad hiccup, “Too late.”

“So we’ve established that we’ve both got it bad, and we both worry.”

“So what should we do about it?”

“What do you think, Miss Carbonell?”

Maria rubs the side of her face against his, and digs her fingers into his shoulders, pulling him up with her. “Come to bed, Mr. Stark.”


	12. Schrödinger's Nat - Wednesday, Sept. 10, 1952

### CH12 - Schrödinger's Nat - Wednesday, Sept. 10, 1952

Tony is battered by sex from all sides.

Despite having the room to himself he sleeps poorly, heading down early to the dining room for breakfast, only to come across Ana Jarvis, white robe clutched in one hand, opening her door to a trolley of coffee and rolls.

He catches sight of the men's striped shirt under the robe, a pajama pattern he recognizes from years of Jarvis helping him to bed in the wee small hours. Her hair spills loose off her shoulder as she bends to pull the trolley inside, and he doesn’t remember ever seeing Ana with her hair down. It’s more intimate than his parents’ rounds of grab-ass. She flicks it back with a smile to him, rich and knowing, before closing the door. He feels old...and it occurs to him he’s not just older than _this_ Ana, he’s not that far from being older than she will _ever_ be.

It turns his stomach; not the intimacy, but the loneliness. He misses Pepper fiercely. He doesn’t want to have fucked up his own present. He wants the future he’s built from the mistakes of his own past.

Back in the room Bruce is getting out of the shower, scrubbing at his hair, a distinct bruise on his neck visible from where Tony stands in the doorway. “Is that a fucking hickey?”

Bruce blushes, angling his chin to see it in the mirror over the dresser, then shrugs. “Shirt’ll cover it.”

“Christ,” he mutters, throwing his room key on the table. “Are you fourteen?”

The color on Bruce’s face deepens and Tony recognizes the hard set of jaw that means pissed off instead of resigned. He holds up his hands, peacemaking, and changes the topic to the weather, telling him the rain outside is in for the long haul, the edge of a tropical storm skirting the island on its way north.

But now Tony is watching.

~*~

They come down to find the hotel swinging into storm mode. Literally--there's even a band playing.

A stale message awaits Howard at the front desk, a telegram that had come in yesterday from one of his buddies in the Early Warning squadron. The manager had taken one look at the thundercloud on Howard’s face when he came in arguing with Maria and had decided discretion was the better part of valor. It’s not like it wouldn’t be obvious anyway, once they sent the staff around to latch all the shutters and moved the patio furniture into the ballroom.

Just after breakfast the tropical storm is christened Hurricane George, but it's expected to just brush the island like a bruiser knocking his shoulder on a passerby to make a point. The Golden Garden Club responds with an indoor picnic to keep the guests occupied and amused and indoors. It’s not something they usually bother with when the hotel is barely occupied, half of it being renovated for the coming season, but due to their high-profile guest they’re making the extra effort.

Lur is not to be found, but Natasha had expected as much. The film canister had contained some kind of offering or parting gift; a holy card for Our Lady of Charity rolled carefully around a scrap of golden cloth with five sunflower seeds and a bracelet tucked inside. Natasha wears it on her ankle, tiny yellow and honey glass beads, with a smattering of red and green and black.

She takes it as an apology, because why not?

Natasha leans back in one of the plush club chairs in the lobby, watching the staff string a badminton net across one end of the room, blankets and cushions and picnic baskets being laid out at the other end amid battery lanterns fitted with colored gels. The larger windows have been taped with Xs and boarded, and the chandeliers lit to counter the gloom. “So when Maria said it rained a lot…” 

“Could be her dry wit.” Bruce stands with his hands in his pockets. It doesn’t escape her that he’s both hovering and trying to refrain from looming, edgy and protective of both of them. She wonders if he’d be more or less antsy if she hadn’t put him through his paces into the early hours. “Could be a result of our butterfly effect.”

Tony winces.

“It buys some time,” she turns to him, “if you want to intervene.”

He closes his eyes but that doesn't hide their exaggerated roll. He pushes himself out of his chair and strides to the back corner of the lobby where the service corridors are.

~*~

It’s not fair to say that Tony has second thoughts when he has to corral Howard from the lounge where he’s holed up with Peggy. Tony’s been oscillating between first and second thoughts for over a week now, but it comes down to this: he has to give them a chance.

He doesn’t have to be nice about it, though. Tony nods hello to Peggy, who gets a tight look around the jaw when she sees his face. He takes the rocks glass from Howard’s hand and tosses back the scotch himself.

“Eddie, no offense, but I’m not interested in any more SHIELD minor-leaguer shenanigans--ow!” Howard cuts off with a glare to Peggy that she matches.

Tony thumps the glass down with a hard click, tells his father, “Come with me if you want to live,” and heads behind the bar into the kitchen.

Howard shoves at the swinging door, following him.

Tony speaks without turning to look, “Take your jacket off, grab an apron. I’ve already spoken with the chef de cuisine, he’ll show you what you need to do.”

Chef Baptiste resembles a blood sausage made of gravitas and kitchen scars. His nod is respectful, but as they’re now standing in his demesne, it’s in no way deferential.

“I hardly think I need to settle the bill with dish washing,” Howard jokes, but he’s uneasy. Chef tilts his head at Tony, who explains.

“In addition to training at Le Cordon Bleu, Chef Baptiste has travelled extensively in Italy, and is prepared to assist you in making the Bolognese. For the dinner you’re making for Maria.”

Howard considers Tony with sharp eyes, as Tony pulls an apron off a wall hook. “Did Peggy set you up to this?”

“Peggy has nothing to do with this. Frankly, as much as I hate to say it, neither do I. Maria may walk out of your life for good once the airport opens, but that’s her choice to make.” Tony shoves the apron at Howard’s chest and lets go, forcing him to catch it before it falls to the floor. “Whether she knows how you feel about her, that’s all on you. Make something for her, with your own hands.”

“The stomach,” Chef Baptiste rumbles, “is the way to a _woman’s_ heart as well.”

~*~

Natasha closes the little red suitcase, her face pulled into a puzzled moue.

She examines her hands, then opens the suitcase again. This time, all she finds are clothes. She closes it again.

Bruce watches her from where he sits on her bed. “You gonna keep shaking the Magic 8 Ball?”

She purses her lips, like he’s cheating by saying it out loud even though she’s been blatant about the suitcase with Tony. “I thought…” she looks up at him, and he knows what she’s going to say, swallows hard. “It’s been about choice, I think.”

He nods.

“You drink, but you don’t become a monster. I try to make the best decisions I can. Stark learns that people come together for so many reasons.”

“That he’s not responsible for everything, no matter how much it hurts.” Bruce steps closer. He has felt the rage thrum through him, has fought against it, but never once did it consume him. He’s lashed out at the occasional object, at enemies, but never at the people he loves. 

Tony has seen the foundation of everything that shaped him, all of his banked resentments now made life through his insight. He can still resent Howard, but he can mourn him now too.

“There have to be consequences,” Natasha says. “There is always a price.”

“We’re still here,” he says softly, and he risks moving closer, taking her hand and turning it, pressing his mouth to the center of her palm. “Maybe you were wrong?”

“I hope I am.” She cups his face, and her mouth is gentle against his, the touch of tenderness, more than desire. “But I know I’m not wrong. I was given a choice because I understand the consequences.”

Bruce thinks she’s probably right. He swallows around the tightening in his throat and pulls her to him, wrapping his arms around her waist, burying his face in her neck. She holds him fast, a fierce grip on his back, and he can feel her tremble slightly.

She pushes free, but doesn’t let go of him, and shoves the suitcase off the bed.

This time, it’s empty.

~*~

Tony meets up with Bruce and Natasha in his own suite that afternoon, and while they’re fully clothed and sitting primly at the table fiddling with the radio, the humid atmosphere in the room is charged with more than the pounding rain and gusting wind outside the shutters.

He’d like to play this game for their sake, and maybe for his, the vast pretense that they aren’t fucking, that they don’t look at each other like they’ve found something extraordinary, that they aren't desperately afraid to lose it.

It would be far easier without the pillow feather in Banner’s goddamned hair, or if Romanoff’s mouth wasn’t bare of lipstick but kissed red, the ghost of the sunburn on the nape of her neck now joined by a heated patch of stubble burn on her shoulder.

Goddamnit, they’ve got an entire hotel to fuck in. Why did they have to bring this tension into his room, where he has to notice?

He can’t do anything about her, but he passes behind Bruce on his way to the rum and mutters, “Feathers, Bunsen,” ruffling the back of his own head.

Bruce immediately paws at his hair. Natasha takes him by the elbow to turn him and pick the detritus out, businesslike. Then she threads her fingers through the curls at his crown, palming his head briefly, but long enough for his eyes to flutter shut.

"Stop it already,” Tony says, pulling out the third chair at the table.

Bruce looks at him from under his brow, a flash of wariness made Hulk-like by the green in his eyes and the low slung lip. The scritches slow but don’t stop as Natasha counters, “Helping to modulate stress is supportive.”

“You keep telling yourself that.”

“I’m doing a public service.”

“A, you're ruining all my hard work. B, you're just making out in public without making out and you both know it. I know all about taking advantage, and I hate you both."

They comport themselves a little more professionally as Tony sets up the radio for shortwave, but as he tunes in the dial he sees them both watching Bruce’s fingers trace a slow line from Natasha’s palm up past the crook of her elbow.

~*~

Howard pulls out Maria’s seat and flicks open the napkin, but then just sits across from her, dishing out pasta and bread. They’re at a small table pulled into a corner of the kitchen under the jaundiced eye of Chef Baptiste, who pours the wine himself before clapping Howard on the shoulder and striding off to unleash a barrage of French accented Spanish on his sous chefs.

“You cooked?” Maria is all reserved amusement as she eyes the fresh burn on his hand, the stained rolled up sleeves of his ruined dress shirt.

“I gave you an extravaganza, and you hated me. I tried to protect you, and I made it worse. So I’m thinking that we just have dinner, two hungry people. Tonight. In case it’s the last one. I wanted you to see that I could do something with my hands.”

She drinks half of the wine in her glass, and looks at Howard shrewdly. “It’d be both, though, wouldn’t it?”

He thinks about this, and then shrugs. “Yes. I like extravagance. But I can temper it. I like working with my hands. I want to keep you safe, but that doesn’t mean sheltered. I understand that.”

“I love you,” Maria says suddenly, her lashes wet, but those eyes the color of strong coffee pinning him. For all her delicacy and depth, there’s something _relentless_ about her that’s thrummed something inside Howard since he met her. “But a life with you is terrifying. Your life is terrifying.”

Howard puts down his fork, like the work of his own hands disappoints him.

“You made this for me?” she says then, like she’s veering off course. “It tastes so familiar. Like home--”

“Marry me,” he says, “and we’ll build a home. We’ll build something together. It won’t be my life, it will be ours.”

“With SHIELD, and spies, and showgirls?”

“And sex, and travel, and anything you want to build the world you want as well.”

“That’s too much, Howard.”

“It’s not. You just think it is.”

She drinks the rest of her wine, and she looks at him, and looks at the plate, and finally says, “Our life?”

“Yes. Always.” 

“You’re ready for that?”

He nods, pushing his chair back.

“I’m tired of being afraid,” she says, “of the wrong things.”

“Does that mean yes?”

She nods, and Howard sinks slowly out of the chair, to kneel before her, and lays his cheek on her lap, chaste and warm and right.

“Let’s eat, and let’s go upstairs,” Maria says, stroking his hair, fingers on his neck. “And after, I’ll pack, and go home and wait for you.”

~*~

It’s been hours of music and bilingual weather reports, all of it punctuated by the radio static of lightning.

Natasha waits patiently with sharpened pencil as the crackling signals wash over her like the rain now intermittently sluicing the shutters. Bruce sits on the end of the bed, worrying his thumbs against each other, elbows on his knees. His glasses are tossed to the side. Tony has been pacing between the two of them, but slides into the seat across from Natasha to idly flick through his newspaper.

He recognizes the Slavic cadence as it breaks through the weather report, the twisty tap dance of consonants rendered by Natasha’s cursive scribble.

When the transmission ends, she nods, face solemn, and goes through the motions of shutting things down, winding up the antenna, putting away her equipment with a deliberation that’s at odds with her normal ease of motion.

“It’s going to take me a while to decrypt this one. Could you two give me some space, maybe bring up some dinner?” She doesn’t look at Bruce, but Tony does.

He’s stopped the nervous fidgeting, gripping his hands so tightly that the skin whitens around the press of his fingers.

She clears her throat and finally shoots Bruce a wry look, “The elevators are shut down for the storm, you’ll need the both of you to haul the food up.”

Bruce warily rises, and catches her hand as he passes, brushing his thumb over the back of her knuckles. She pauses to allow the gesture, her other hand soft against his cheek before she pulls away to pick the pencil back up.

It’s an intimacy that twists in Tony’s gut, neither of them hiding the connection.

~*~

Natasha darts down the service stairs but Peggy Carter catches her in the lobby, tea on a tray. It’s hard to say no to her request to sit, but she’s itching to move, to stretch her legs, to have space to work through what she’s now confirmed. Still, she owes this to the legend of Margaret Carter, maybe even to Steve. So she sits. Takes tea. 

“We’ve confirmed that the dive incident was the Cubans, they want all of us out.” Peggy says when they’re tucked into a corner of the lounge, the delicate tea cup cradled in her hands. “This situation will likely get worse, and it’s terrible, but it’s petty squabbles compared to what we face as a world. It's why SHIELD is important, why international cooperation is so essential to peace.” 

Natasha doesn’t contradict her.

“Howard has agreed to step up his involvement.”

Natasha lets her own tea steam in front of her. It’s good news for Tony, for all of them perhaps. Their own timeline asserting itself.

“I’m not asking you about the future,” Carter continues. “I don’t think I’d change my mind no matter what. And I suppose I don’t want to know. But...” she worries at her napkin. “I wouldn’t mind a sense of...direction.

“SHIELD changes the world,” Natasha says finally, deciding it doesn’t fucking matter if she gives too much away. “And my life, for what that’s worth. Which is probably not much.”

“Change for the better?” Carter’s fidgeting stops.

Natasha sees in those penetrating eyes every agent who’s ever looked at an asset, at a situation, at a choice, and wondered: is there anything good I can pull from this fire? She thinks of Howard spending decades trawling the ocean floor for Steve, Clint’s habit of overanalyzing the people in his crosshairs and bringing home strays, Tony’s insistence that Bruce would make his way back to Manhattan. She thinks of Pierce and the bank vault where they kept Barnes. She thinks of the echo of Arnim Zola living on in tape drives, a facsimile of a human, a Jungian shadow to the real AI Tony will create in homage to Edwin Jarvis.

She thinks of a hundred thousand lives saved that should never have been in danger, HYDRA rising and SHIELD falling on its own sword to stop it. Maybe the fight is the point, the struggle to keep choosing the right thing. To keep that choice alive. The shrug and cliche she gives might as well be labeled _Phil Coulson, in memoriam_ , “It’s a tough row to hoe, but overall? I’d say yes.”

Carter nods, and Natasha’s not sure if that’s acceptance or dismissal. “I thought, when the war was over, I could go back to simply being myself. To being Margaret Carter, out there in the world. But once you take the reins of responsibility, it doesn’t end, does it?”

It’s so philosophical Natasha wonders if Peggy has laced the tea with something stronger.

Instead, she gets up, and brushes her mouth against Peggy’s cheek, and whispers, so softly it barely counts as words, “Steve is so proud of you.”

And Natasha leaves.

~*~

Bruce swears, dropping the dinner tray on the table and picking up Natasha’s scrawled notes.

“What’s it say?” Tony tries to keep his voice light, but can’t quite manage it. Natasha’s crepe-soled deck shoes and umbrella are gone.

Bruce swallows, but his voice is steady. “Orders to bring in Carter. Or be...brought in by force.”

Tony’s laugh bounces hard off the tile, like the crack of a gun. No one can force Romanoff to do anything. Good luck trying.”

Bruce lets himself fall into the chair she’d vacated, the hand holding her notes trembling, but his eyes are closed and his breath slow and steady.

The bitter amusement dies in Tony’s throat. “What are you doing?”

Bruce shakes his head, eyes still closed.

He’s used to these leaps, used to sharing them with Bruce -- tiny pieces of evidence that lead him to a conclusion that other people would need spelled out with a chalkboard and fucking slide rule.

This is different. He’s not sure how he gets there -- whether it was Romanoff’s note, Bruce’s face, or a niggling suspicion that he’s been carrying all along. “Bruce, what the fuck is going on?”

“It’s over, Tony.”

Romanoff doesn’t plan to come back, and Bruce is just sitting there, resigned, like he’s accepting this bullshit. It’s too much.

Tony used to think he understood rage. A year with Bruce has taught him that what he thought was rage was actually frustration expressed as a tantrum, irritation, misunderstanding, basic bouts of anger. Rage is something else, and watching it manifest in Bruce is such a visceral experience that it has forced Tony to re-evaluate his own emotional responses to the world around him.

But in this moment, in the face of Bruce’s seemingly calm acceptance, he can feel true rage tingle up through his fingertips to his chest. “The _hell_ it is, it’s not over until we find her and we all go home.”

Bruce flings his glasses onto the table and grabs his face like he’s trying to rip it off his skull, his voice strained, “Tony--”

“No!” He swipes the notes and tries to decipher Natasha’s handwriting, nothing like the precise cursive she’d used to correspond with his mother. “I have spent this clusterfuck of a week watching my parents fumble around each other, deny and tease and claw at understanding. I’ve watched Peggy Fucking Carter choose work over love because she’s the best person for the job. I’ve seen the way love builds, and devastates, and you’re telling me that you’re _okay_ with this? That you can look at me, and just let her decide to die? That’s just…”

He sees it then, and takes a step back, the wind knocked out of his proverbial sails. It's not just rage that Bruce has struggled with, and the anguish on his face is proof of that.

“Tony,” he says softly, and it tears at him, the sound of his friend’s voice, “this was hers to take. To do. Her chance to...make restitution of sorts. What else could I do?”

“That's _bullshit_. You _fight_ her on it, you convince her it's idiotic, that she's important. Not just to you, but to…” Tony swallows, “To _us_ , she’s important.”

“You don't know what it's like,” Bruce says, wiping down his face. His eyes are a sickly khaki, red rimmed. “You think you do, but you really don't. The literal blood on your hands, the knowledge that you've done unspeakable acts. That you can't ever do anything big enough to redeem them. If given the same chance I'd take it.”

Tony shakes his head in denial, “No, you wouldn't.”

“Yes,” he says, “I would, and it would be more than I deserve.”

Tony’s fists clench against that. He's still rallying his response when Bruce draws in a ragged breath.

“There is nothing else I can give her Tony, nothing.” He speaks with the quiet deliberation of bringing someone up to speed in a late night hospital waiting room. His eyes darken like autumn leaves, his will and his heart swallowing down the rage, transmuting it to grief. “Not a family, not a future. Just this. Time and acceptance and...the knowledge that someone sees her sacrifice, loves her through it.”

Bruce rises and puts his hand on Tony’s shoulder, heavy.

“So let’s finish the job and go home.”

~*~

It’s nasty outside, the streets scrubbed and littered with leaves and branches. The wind is still blowing but the rain is all fits and starts. Natasha is cold even before the water soaks through her clothes, and she wishes she’d had a coat to bring. If she opens the umbrella, the wind will rip it from her hands.

The park is nearly empty, the palm trees swaying alarmingly.

Natasha isn't surprised to see a figure on the far bench, rain hat and sleek trench coat offering a modicum of protection. The _doch’_ , the daughter mentioned in her orders alongside Carter. The real target she tasked with bringing in. The one that got away, that Moscow wants back.

“Nata,” Dottie doesn’t get up, just pats the bench next to her with bright-cheeked cheer, splashing up rainwater. “Little sister.”

Natasha remains standing, buffeted by a gust of wind.

“I appreciate your restraint with Carter, Nata. Your sacrifice doesn’t go unremarked. But I couldn’t leave owing you a debt.” Dottie smiles, beatific. “Sometimes, Fate gives you a second chance to makes things right.” 

“It’s never that easy.” Something settles in her belly, sour and thin. Of course it isn’t.

“Making friends never is,” Dottie’s eyes dart to the side. “But it turns out they have their uses.”

Two soldiers come out from behind a bed of tall plants. They’re armed. She can take them, and Dottie knows this.

“They aren’t friends if you use them, that’s the whole point you’re missing,” she says, but Dottie is already shaking her head.

Over the sound of the wind someone clears their throat.

Natasha turns.

It’s as unsettling as anything she could have imagined. Hair bright, even damp with rain, green eyes burning with the fervor of purpose. She’s dressed in a tac suit, a variation far more military special ops than the sleek protection Natasha now wears in the field. 

Nataliya Romanova is eerily beautiful in a way Nat barely remembers being, and which she never fully appreciated the impact of until this very moment.

“Zdravstvuyte,” Nataliya greets Nat formally, and her smile is a bloody warning.

Had she ever been this terribly young? This supple and dangerous and oblivious?

“Regardless, it turns out I’m not ready for retirement,” Dottie whispers sweetly in her ear. She’d risen without Nat realizing it, too caught up in the vision of her past, and in that moment of turning to prevent the arm coming around her throat a blade slides up under her ribs, sharp and short and deadly.

She is caught between them, her body convulsing before she can rise above the flood of pain.

“I was offered my own trade,” Dottie murmurs, lips brushing Nat’s cheek, the arm around her neck not strangling, not yet, just holding her up, “bring in _the American widow_ , their failed attempt to replicate the Red Room, the one who’s been up to all kinds of naughty mischief in my name--”

Nataliya steps closer, driving the blade up toward the aorta.

Nat’s abdomen is hot, her breathing a challenge that signals blood crowding out her lungs, but she gasps, “Pompous prick, only one eye?”

Nataliya breaks her stare to look at Dottie, wary.

Nat drives her own point home. “Everything has a price.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m the one who has to pay it, Nata.” Dottie braces against the pull of Nat’s hands on her forearm.

Nat looks at Nataliya, sees the mouth she’s painted a million times go sullen in thought. “Exactly.”

A sheet of rain sprinkles the three of them.

Nat throws herself into the pain, curling into the wound and kicking out with both feet, shoving her younger self and the knife backwards. Dottie’s grip shifts and Nat brings an elbow back hard, feeling the shock of connection up her funny bone, reveling in the satisfying crunch of a broken nose.

Warmth washes down the front of her legs, her blood pouring out. It gives her lungs room to work again, and she gulps for air, buying a few more moments. Her heart races.

Nataliya swears and rearranges her stance. The blade in her hand is covered in blood, but it still gleams bright, or maybe it’s just catching Nat’s focus. She tries to maneuver backwards, keep them both in her sight, but this is a scene she’s watched and participated in too many times. She’s weak and sweaty, but still on her feet. Too dangerous to rush unless the instructors insist, but all they really need to do is wait.

Her heart will keep accelerating until there’s not enough blood for her brain, and then she will fall.

Dottie opens the umbrella and composes herself like letting ruffled feathers smooth. Nataliya declines to share the respite from the rain, instead edging closer to look at Nat with a kind of lost hunger.

Nat’s knees give out, but she’s so numb that landing hard on her shins feels like sinking into a cushion. The pain is easing...she just needs to catch...her breath. Nataliya crouches down, knife dangling between her knees almost forgotten, almost washed clean in the rain.

All Nat can think is that she really wishes she could see in Nataliya what Clint will see decades from now.

They simply look like her own eyes.


	13. Catch You on the Rebound - 21st Century

### CH13 - Catch You on the Rebound - 21st Century

The electricity goes out, the hotel silent.

But that’s not it, silence is wrong, where is the wind?

The air compresses them. Then there’s a suffocating nothing. Then there is _everything_.

Bruce sees the universes layered over each other like an animator’s cell.

In one, New York falls. In another, the world. In another, there’s no change, just a vast, deafening absence. 

In another, for an instant, he holds an infant with shocking red hair as he sobs with terrified joy. That one burns and flares out like a supernova.

In another, he never becomes anything at all. 

One holds metal monsters and dark haired children and human rage turned inward like a chronic parasite.

In the last, before the darkness cracks, he swallows the earth, he crushes it under his palms, he becomes everything he ever feared.

Tony makes the suit in each one. Dies differently. Lives differently. Tony’s possibilities are infinite, but his heart always glows brightly. Even when he’s destroying everything around him.

Natasha slides in and out of most, shadowy and distant, whole and perfect. His and not his and always her own. Her hair is a beacon, a flame of flickering shades, and her will so vivid it lights him up.

Bruce is burning from the inside out.

The rage is a division, an alien, a monster, his heart, his poisonous home. Both cause and effect, as if it were always a pure line of fire through him and now it’s simply taking shape. 

He was one. 

And now, once again, bones cracking and mind fracturing and heart breaking, he is two.

~*~

Nat finds herself back in the sundress and sandals, standing in a nearly empty room. She presses her hand to her stomach, feeling it whole despite the sore ache angling up between her lungs.

An old man sits at a small table in front of her, in a thin guayabera shirt of slate blue. She recognizes him.

The brim of his battered panama hat is off kilter, swooping low over the missing eye the same way its scarred lid almost, but not quite, hides the empty socket. The table is a chessboard, but it's been set up for checkers with US quarters and Soviet 5 kopek coins.

He gestures to the opposite seat but Natasha hesitates, smoothing the bodice of the dress as she takes a slow deep breath.

“Alloy of nickel versus alloy of brass.” He hums, considering. “You're wise not to choose a side.”

“Maybe I'm just fickle,” Natasha takes the seat, examining a kopek from the board, “maybe I'd rather focus on one game at a time.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” He lifts a cigar to his lips and takes a drag. He lets the smoke out with the words, “Do you want to see any of your roads not taken?”

“Frost?” She laughs, “that’s trite even for you.”

Odin smirks.

“No,” Natasha shakes her head, “only if I can change them.”

~*~

“Goddamn it, she solved it,” Tony is on his feet in an instant, “She’s got to be here, too--Bruce?”

Bruce is still in the heap he arrived in, discarded on the narrow bridge of conducting crystal that hums beneath a vault of stars.

“Bruce! Come on, man--”

“She solved it.” He pushes himself up enough to meet Tony’s eyes with a shake of his head. “But it’s never been that kind of game. It was always her life on the line.”

“NO!” Tony stalks off, but there are only two directions to go, across a chasm, or to the observatory that generates the Bifrost. He stops for a long time, looking down at the abyss. He’d been so swept away by the goddamned sex farce part he didn’t realize he was really in a tragedy.

Bruce hasn’t moved when he walks back.

“I’m sorry. I…” Tony grinds his teeth, “I got carried away and I...thought it would be good. The two of you. I thought it would work.”

Bruce offers him a puzzled expression, a horrible icing on the cake of how ragged and hollow he already looks. “No, Tony...that part was good...it was worth it.”

~*~

Natasha has built a cantilevered structure of kopeks, improbably sticking out off the edge of the table like a diving board. “King me.”

Odin bangs the table, knocking them into her lap.

She gathers them from her skirt and flicks the whole handful into the air, but they turn into birds, circle to gather the flock, and then fly off.

Natasha briefly wishes she could follow, off into the sky beyond this room. She’s had enough of Odin’s manipulations. “So what was the point of all this?”

“You can’t tell me no one has ever tested your mettle before now.”

She leans back, elbow propped on the arm of the chair and waits for him to answer her question.

He finally doffs his hat, setting it on his crossed knee. “Your blood brother…”

She blinks slow, daring him to say a word about Clint, who’s suffered at the hands of one son and yet fights at the side of the other.

“...and the Captain...I know the measure of them both.” Odin taps ash from his dwindling cigar. “Whereas you, and the Doctor, and the Engineer…”

~*~

They get back, somehow, Bruce following Tony like tailing a bumper under road hypnosis. It’s night in New York when the rainbow flash of the Bifrost dissipates, drizzle of rain on the roof of the tower pooling in the runic imprint on the helipad with a sizzle.

Tony tugs at the sleeve of his jacket, just enough to overcome inertia and get him moving again. They don’t make it far, just inside to the sunken conversation pit where they pin down the two ends of the same couch, silent. Caught in the weightless apogee between shock and mourning.

“JARVIS,” Tony quietly croaks, “status on the rest of the team?”

“ _Captain Rogers is en route, ETA two hours. Mr. Barton will land in approximately forty-six minutes. Thor remains offworld. Ms. Romanoff's location is unknown--_ ”

“Enough!”

“ _Yes, sir._ ”

Bruce is on his feet before he realizes it, waving off Tony’s effort to follow him, pushing the breaker bar on the stairwell exit because he can’t bear the thought of waiting for even the express penthouse elevator doors to open.

It’s only the ring in his ears from his pulse, and the saw of his breath through his tight throat as he descends the stairs in something just controlled enough not to be a fall. He doesn’t stop at his floor.

He palms the access screen, and JARVIS lets him onto Natasha’s floor.

~*~

“So this was just what? Vetting Thor’s friends?”

“He has pledged his life for the safety of Midgard, and while mortal he has carried through with his word. Is it wrong of me to take the measure of his companions in battle?”

Natasha rolls the 5 kopek coin across the backs of her knuckles, then palms it. When she rolls it across in the other direction, it’s a dollar. She settles it on her closed fist and flicks her thumb to send it pinging into the dark. The echoes are strange, and give her no idea of the space she’s in. “So what’s the verdict; can Thor come out and play?”

“A man of heart and hearth, and another who strives to be worthy,” Odin folds his hands on the handle of his walking stick and rests his chin atop them. A cool breeze stirs the wisps of hair too fine and short to be caught in his braided queue. “The pair of them are good enough to watch my son’s back, if it came down to it.”

“And us three?”

He’s missing the opposite eye from Nick, so his head tilts in a mirror direction than she’s accustomed to as he studies her.

“A shapeshifter, a berserker, and a man who’ll take responsibility.”

She holds his gaze. She’s been judged by the best. A godlike alien with a fratboy sense of humor doesn’t scare her. She says evenly, “Your own mythos glorify these things.” 

He winks with his missing eye. “True.”

“So what does this mean?” she asks, letting impatience layer in her tone. She’s never gained anything by not working a situation. “I’m dead in one timeline. Does that mean I wasn’t worthy? Did I eliminate myself? Is this a lesson, or a life?”

He rubs his chin. “Self-sacrifice is tricky,” he says, and she wants to throw something at him as his mouth curls with irony. “It can be as selfish as anything else.”

“Says a being who accepts sacrifices and doesn’t make them.”

“I’ve done my time on the Tree, shapeshifter,” Odin bites out sharply, “hanging in the balance with only the blade in my guts for company.”

“Still,” she drawls, “I have to think a godlike alien has a different working definition of sacrifice than a mere mortal who bled out half a century ago.”

“Oh no?” He flicks a coin right at her eyes, and when she catches it there’s a slice of pain up under her ribs that makes her gasp. “Like I said, it’s tricky. Offerings have been made.”

Natasha can still feel the press of trying to catch her breath, and she wonders if she’ll be haunted by such corporeal concerns once she leaves this room, wherever it is she goes. “It wasn’t a sacrifice, anyway. It was a choice. So where does that leave me?”

“Your choice was...surprising,” he says. “And so, I’m willing to… consider expanding your choices.”

~*~

“Tony, what the fuck happened?” Pepper’s voice on the intercom is punctuated by JARVIS’s apology, “ _Ms. Potts has utilized her executive override, Sir._ ”

“Honey, it’s so good to hear you.”

There’s the shudder in her voice she gets when she’s at the end of her rope and about to flog the crew with it like the stern captain of industry she is, “Oh my God, Tony.” 

He slumps forward on the couch, elbows on knees and face in his hands, “You have no idea how good, how much - when are you getting in from Lond--”

“I’m _in_ the _building_ ,” that heavy emphasis like she’s actually lashing you with her words. “Something was discovered in the archives, Tony, can you meet me in the Tac Room?”

“Archives?”

“Bring Natasha and Bruce.”

Tony bares his teeth to the empty room. It’s an expression as close to a smile as a blade against the throat is close to a knife buttering toast.

He does not attempt to contact Bruce, he goes down to the Avengers Tactical Room alone.

~*~

“You stay here and the sacrifice stands. Or you return, and it remains a lesson.”

“What happens to Dottie?”

His eyebrows slam down, peevish. “You don’t want to know your own future, but you ask after your betrayer?”

“She was what she was made, but then she chose become more. I don’t resent her maneuvering to try to save herself and a possible protege. What happens to her?”

“She dies.” He purses his mouth, somewhat displeased. “You all die. That’s what mortals do.”

Natasha is tired of going over this. “I made a choice. I’ll live with it. Or, die with it, whatever.”

There’s a very, very long pause, and he says, “Fine.” He makes a gesture and a door opens, a dark eyed man in gold armor and a sober expression standing there.

“He’ll escort you.”

Natasha swallows hard. She wishes for her tac suit, for some way to look strong and stand firm in front of this petty god. Something more intimidating than a sundress and barefaced courage. Even the beaded token from Lur is gone.

But she won’t let any of that show. She moves towards the door.

“Don't forget your baggage,” Odin flicks a bushy grey eyebrow at the little red suitcase she hadn’t noticed parked at her feet.

“I'm not comfortable taking gifts from strange old busybodies.”

“Oh that's not mine. You came with that.”

Fine. She tucks her chin and picks up the suitcase, turns to go.

“Shapeshifter…”

She sets down the suitcase. It’s never that easy.

“Did you truly think you could balance your books?”

“Over a lifetime, perhaps. Hope doesn’t have to make sense,” Natasha shrugs, “It just has to show up more days than not.”

“And this is what you bought with your own life’s portion of blood? Expiation?”

“No.” She’s tired of defending herself, has earned the right to push back a little. Natasha returns to the table, and gathers the coins on her side of the board and shoves the clanking pile toward Odin. “Just time.”

“So you don’t see your death as a sacrifice.”

“I wasn’t looking for brownie points. I was betting everything I have to give Dottie a chance to choose her own way.”

“And also yourself.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, her hand clenching the handle of the suitcase, “whether my younger self would be left to take the fall was more of a hypothetical there until the very end.”

“So you took the fall instead...” Odin leaves the sentence hanging.

Natasha shrugs one shoulder and shakes her head ruefully.

He grips the chessboard underhanded and flips it, coins scattering, Natasha scattering into darkness, “...but where will you land?”

~*~

Tony buries his face in Pepper’s shoulder as she rants about Asgard and diplomacy being like delicate international contract negotiation, “times, like, a billion, because other than Thor, Aesir have no concept of human time scale, so even emergencies aren’t emergencies for them,” and he’s just breathing in the scent of her and trying to drive the smell of cigarette smoke and ozone out of his head.

The conference room door is open, but he’s not ready to go in.

Pepper touches his face--and her sharp focus has always left him a little weak-kneed, but Tony feels a literal wobble. She catches at him, her grip so strong and sure that it steadies him. She’s wearing sneakers. He’s missed sneakers and missed her so much that he chuckles and it sounds hysterical.

And he doesn’t...know anything. Bruce is a wreck. Romanoff is gone. He’s got everything he wants here in his arms and he wants to throw up, and he doesn’t even know if it worked.

He’s going to sound crazy, but he has to know. “JARVIS? Can you sum up the last forty-five years of history for me?”

“ _Mr. Stark?_ ” And just the slightly snide, concerned tone of his AI is such a relief, “ _Perhaps you can narrow those parameters?_ ”

“Personal history, J., as in mine. And my folks. Start with their wedding. SHIELD. Stark Expos. My birth. Timeline of the Maria Stark Foundation. SI. Dad’s partnership with Obie. Their deaths.”

JARVIS makes a noise like he’d rather not, but then reels off statistics that Tony knows in his bones. But if they’d changed, would he even know? He thinks he would. Their wedding date sounds right. 

Pepper looks stricken. “Tony, what’s all this about your parents? Where have you been?” She palms his face. “What’s going on? Is this about the photo album?”

He pulls his head back from where it’s been buried in her neck. “What photo album?”

Pepper’s expression hardens and she nods at the conference room.

Nick Fury has taken the seat at the head of the meeting table, one hand curled around a mug with a tea tag hanging out of it, the other resting on a heavy cardboard shirtbox, faded green and battered at the corners. “Mr. Stark.”

“Give it a rest,” Tony says. He feels stone gray and weary. So far it seems like a reset, like the whole fucking romp was just that.

Except for Romanoff. Fuck.

Pepper’s arm circles his waist and he holds her in turn, the sides of their hips solid against each other, grounding him like a hot wire. “I’m not taking any more gigs from mysterious one-eyed men.”

“I’d rather wait,” Nick pauses to drink his tea, “until the rest of the Paramus Three have arrived.”

“Yeah, that’s gonna be a bummer. I’d say I was sorry about whatever intergalactic diplomatic incident this shitshow’s going to spiral into, but fuck that. They started it.”

“Tony,” Pepper says, exactly like he’s been hearing echoing in his mind for over a week, but completely different.

“Also, Peggy’s a tattletale.”

“Tony, JARVIS reports Bruce is back in the building, but Natasha hasn’t arrived--”

“Honey,” is all he says.

Pepper’s mouth clamps shut, because she knows.

Nick does too, he has to, his one eye bulging and his face gone ashy, but he says very delicately and with great precision, “That is not what I want to hear.”

Tony pours himself a drink, and one for Pepper when she turns over a second glass. He finally takes a seat at the opposite end of the table from Nick Fury. “Then talk.”

Fury sends the shirt box sliding toward him and Pepper darts out a hand to catch it, slipping it the last few inches to Tony.

“The Director of SHIELD is entrusted with...certain files...above any other clearance level.”

Tony is shaky but he’s drinking scotch like he was born to it -- and having spent ten days with Howard, he’s pretty sure he was. “You’ve known for _fifteen years_ that we show up in 1950s Cuba, and you never questioned it?”

Fury acknowledges this with a tilt of his head, but his skin is drawn tight around the mouth.

Tony flips open the box and pulls out a leather bound photo album -- a duplicate of Ana’s sightseeing snaps. A scrapbook of his real legacy, not just the company or the baggage from Howard, but all of it, his mother and the Jarvises and Aunt Peggy, the future they were trying to build together. He comes across photos he’s never seen before but that feel like deja vu, Bruce squinting out at the open water over the weathered walls of a fort, Natasha looking askance from the lens with that damned notch between her brows.

He knows what that notch feels like from the inside.

Pepper draws a slim file out of the box. He recognizes Peggy’s bold handwriting, his mother’s own scrawling strokes, and a few diagrams that look like his father’s drafting.

“Maria didn’t know,” Fury clarifies, “but she wrote out an account of the weekend for Carter. She insisted upon it, independent corroboration. There are some notes from your dad as well, speculation about some of the tech he saw, trying to figure out if you really had access to things he didn’t. Howard always hated being left out.”

Tony’s only half listening. He’s too tired to be angry, too wretchedly sad to give a shit as Fury unwinds a tale of events foretold.

It just sounds like feint from another one-eyed asshole.

“Peggy Carter didn’t know what we’d become,” Tony traces the photo of the three of them in his parents' suite. His own date of birth is noted underneath, in the same hand but the ink is whiter, a fresher bottle. “We never told her, but, well…”

It’s been a long time since he visited, but never once did Peggy hint that she’d known him this way, that she held a piece of his future. Maybe she rarely thought about it, or maybe her part of the bargain was keeping it close. She was a spy first, after all.

He wonders, also, if not telling him when he was younger was calculated...if she also wanted to see if it had been real.

These days, the past and the present intertwine for Peggy, and half the time he’s visited, she’s taken him for Howard. It tears at him, all those people so vibrant and alive not six hours ago. Tony is so bitter he could make a Manhattan with his saliva.

“There aren’t a lot of moments when you can know you’re doing the right thing,” Fury dips his tea bag, and it seems as pointless and superstitious as lighting a candle in the back of a cathedral. “When you deal in secrets and spies, you have to trust yourself. But this dossier, the photos, I let myself believe…”

“One casualty isn’t too much to pay for doing the right thing, is it?”

Fury winces. It reads as deliberate, and Tony rises. Pepper still grips his hand, a tremor like she wants to trust the depth of his reaction and follow him out, but also desperately wants to understand. He stays, but stays on his feet.

“Are we a self-perpetuating story?” he asks. “Is it fate, or fucking H.G. Wells? You can’t tell me that you foresaw Romanoff not coming back.”

Fury sighs, but his eyes are hard and he holds Tony’s gaze. “Natasha has made her own choices since she left the Red Room,” he says. “Whatever happened, I’m sure that she walked into it eyes open.”

Tony doesn’t even bother to laugh. “That’s cold fucking comfort.”

“That’s the only thing I’ve got at the end, Stark,” Fury says, and it sits in his gut, leaden and true for all that.

What else did any of them have, at the end, but choice and consequences? 

~*~

Bruce has been in Natasha’s apartment, though not as often as she’d been in his, her bare feet padding across his kitchen floor, cradling his tea mugs in her hands. Her floor is dominated by sunset shades of blue. Gloomy now with only the recessed lighting of her bookshelves and a subtle line of lights down the corridor to the private rooms of the suite, a candle burning in the window for someone who will never come home.

He sinks cross-legged onto the floor of her living room, looking around at the bookshelves she’d been filling up, the worn afghan in shades of desert orange, tossed aside.

He snags it with his fingers, pulls it down and wraps it around his shoulders, curling even tighter at the faint trace of her scent. Crying is out of the question, it’s all he can do not to scream. His knuckles grind into the thin bone at his temples. He’s choking with it. He’s holding on.

The Hulk is sullen inside of him, and his pain is not an echo but a discordant harmony of Bruce’s. He scoots over so he can lay his head on the cushion of the couch, his face leaking and his breathing erratic but still wary of letting anything like a sob loose.

“So glad we did all that practice,” he jabs to the empty air, wiping his face with the soft wool of the afghan, “so we could both miss you like mad.” 

“Asgardian freebie."

Bruce lurches upward, scurrying away from the voice even as he recognizes it.

~*~

One moment she’d been thrown into the darkness, the next she was in the dim of her own rooms, one foot tucked under the other knee, in her own sleepwear and fuzzy socks, a coin in her left fist like a souvenir.

Bruce is crouched on the floor by her end table, eyes wide and so red they look bruised, but the irises brown.

“Fucking Asgardians,” he breathes, falling down on his knees, her crocheted throw pooled around him as he leans forward on his hands. Struggling. She watches for a long moment, disoriented herself, not knowing if she can move with the ease that might help calm him.

She breathes out his name like a blowing on a dandelion.

His elbows bend, sinking him to the floor. No transformation then. She reaches out with her empty hand, leaning down to rest it on the back of his head. It shakes loose a sob, and she shushes him.

He peels her hand away, locking on her wrist. She slides down toward him as he pulls himself up her arm like a rope. They tangle.

She’s starting to shake like the aftermath of a serious wound. Now he’s shushing her, running his hands all over like there could be pieces missing, like something precious snapped from peril and Natasha starts to laugh because she’s so used to being the peril herself.

Bruce rears back, sudden distance but his eyes take in her face greedily.

“What?” she knows his tells, has been nursing them out of him, and he can shake his head all he wants, deflect, but she still knows.

He’s running all the old calculations again now that he’s back in his own skin, trying to reel it all in, trying to memorize her even as he pulls away and gathers her afghan. “We should go down there, let Tony know you’re...okay.”

Natasha nods once, but she doesn’t get up from the floor. He roughly folds the afghan and tosses it on the couch, and she just looks up at him.

Bruce swallows, twitchy.

She can see it like a double exposure now, the _other_ guy bleeding off the irritation and anxiety like a flywheel storing energy. She sees Bruce has the option again, the ability to drive it all beneath the surface and pretend that it’s only about anger.

Natasha sees her own options, to pretend that she was only reaching for comfort before the big gamble, that this isn’t something she still wants. That nothing has changed. But she’s fresh from the dead and feels stripped down to her soul, raw like Bruce must have felt every hour in Havana.

She raises her open hand toward him.

~*~

Natasha sits at his feet, legs curled to the side like she had lounged at the beach, stunning and real and vulnerable, and his heart surges at the sight, makes his temples pound. This was something he could justify when it was just the two of them. But now? With the other guy rumbling under his skin, his own fierce protectiveness clawing at Bruce’s throat? Is he more of a monster for wanting her still, for wanting this?

She holds up her hand.

He takes a breath and he slips almost effortlessly into the state they’ve been practicing...and he realizes that it’s not a better grip on the Hulk they’ve been building all this time, but also a better grip on Bruce. Hulk is a bomb, but he’s also a buffer. They are both rage, they are both vulnerable, and the drive to smash isn’t solely about destruction, it’s also about breaking through the walls that have locked him away, from pain yes, but also from everything else.

Bruce swallows hard and thinks about Peggy in the fork of the road between love and duty, steeling herself, not because it felt safer to stay contained, but because she really could only have one or the other in that moment in time.

He reaches out to Natasha. Bruce chooses, in this moment, to be vulnerable.

Her hand is hot, and he coaxes her up with him. A glint of metal catches his eye--brushed silver, heavy links--his watch, thick and heavy on her delicate wrist.

“It came through with me,” she says, “maybe because I had yours in my pocket…”

He folds his fingers over hers, and says thickly, “Maybe.”

~*~

The screwy readings in Romanoff’s apartment trip JARVIS’s health and safety overrides, allowing them in...but they pile up just inside because it’s nearly empty.

Pepper says from behind her hand, “Oh my god--”

Bruce blinks at them from the the couch. He still looks terrible.

“She’s,” Bruce clears his throat, waving down the dimly lit hallway, “Natasha’s getting cleaned up.”

“Answer your goddamned phone, Banner.” Tony knows he sounds like Howard in a strop as he stalks toward the armchair and throws himself into it, clutching his forehead. He doesn’t care.

Bruce eyes the rest of them warily, digging the faint muffled chiming from his back pocket, and sliding his thumb across the screen to silence it.

~*~

Natasha can hear everything in her apartment from her bedroom, by design, so it’s not a surprise to find her living room filled when she comes back from washing her face and drinking three glasses of water. She thinks her body might still be feeling the blood loss, but the last thing she wants right now is to quantify the reality of that experience.

Pepper has taken point for the group, hovering, a photo album locked against her chest with both arms. Nick leans against the front door, in a casual charcoal turtleneck that fools no one, an incongruous mug of tea in his hand. Natasha feels herself smirk, thinking that for all the godly bluster delineating her team like a D&D adventuring party, Odin hadn’t taken into account several key players; their savvy trader, and their own one-eyed mystery man.

Heart and Hearth sits perched on the far end of her sofa, no doubt reading everything off her face. Tries to be Worthy fidgets angrily near her bookcases, arms crossed tight as if restraining a punch. Responsibility Himself sits stiff-legged apart from them all in the tufted chair, gripping the arms.

Thor looks like someone just yanked him out of bed by his cape, and is the sheepish focus of the room now that he’s trying to apologize for dear old dad’s meddling.

Everyone busies themselves with not looking at her as she crosses the room to take the far corner of the couch. Only Thor watches her, about to angry-cry. Clint throws her the afghan, offhanded like he wasn’t the one who crocheted it while rehabbing a few broken fingers six years ago. Bruce sits on the floor in front of her, a guard dog, a bastion.

Pepper gracefully sinks down next to Bruce, and puts the photo album on the floor between them. Steve takes the desk chair, still trying to contain his agitation.

Thor stops pacing and finally says, “His intentions were good--” and the room erupts. He booms over their objections like rolling thunder, to just as much effect.

Pepper barks out a short, “Hey!” and once she has everyone’s mulish silence she addresses them in her professional voice, but doesn’t hold back the eye rolling. “We’ve worked out some very clear treaties about Midgardians _not_ being subjects of Asgard. The Avengers and other invited parties native to Earth will henceforth be afforded the rights and protections of foreign dignitaries--so this shit is _not_ happening again.”

Thor meets Pepper’s hard look, “You have my word.”

“Do we have the word of your overprotective dad, then, too?” Clint drawls.

“Overprotective?” Tony shouts, incredulous, as Bruce mutters grimly, “Son of a bitch.” Natasha drags her fingertips through the hair behind his ear, obscured from the rest of the room. He pushes the back of his shoulder against her knee, grounding her in turn.

“Yes,” Clint blinks at them all, emphasizing, “Overprotective. What kind of crowd is his kid running around with? That kind of worry can drive a person crazy.”

“He’s right,” Nick says with a gesture of his mug, “You stupid shits make me crazy all the damned time because I care.”

“He will not do this again,” Thor vows, and when no one has any further objection, he nods and drops onto the couch between her and Clint. He gives her a look that’s wretchedly guilty, “I am so very grateful you are here.”

“Yeah,” she notices he doesn’t say _okay_ or _unharmed_ , which makes it easy to say, “me too.”

~*~

“Come to bed,” Pepper says to Tony, and it’s the kindest of orders.

He closes the album, the pages of the Stark-Carbonell wedding at the back like an afterthought. He gets out of the chair, still ashen, deep in thought. He kisses his fingertips and presses them against Natasha’s temple. Does the same thing to Bruce.

When they’re gone, Bruce leans back to look at her. Her smile is real, if small.

She doesn’t say anything, just slides to join him on the floor. She takes his hand and slides it under her shirt, over her diaphragm. He strokes her skin, feels the give of flesh and bone and muscle. Feels her breath under his palms.

“It hurts,” she says, “but it’s okay.”

He curls his palm around her ribcage, and tilts his head so that his mouth brushes her jaw. She finds his lips, fingers on his cheekbone, and the kiss is soft, quiet. Part of him is uneasy, now that they’re no longer only two people in this room, the Hulk rumbling deep, but he’s determined not to let fear guide this.

“Come to bed,” she murmurs, and slides his arms around her and says, “Yes.”

~*~

“' _Plot's a hot mess but this film made me gay, A+ would recommend_.'" Steve's face pinches with confusion, as he hands Pepper back her phone. "I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way, but I guess we all figure it out in different ways, right? The more the merrier."

Pepper presses her lips together and gives a single nod. When Steve looks away her wide eyes flick to Tony, who simply waggles his eyebrows as the opening credit sequence settles into an establishing shot of an Austrian castle.

Bruce stretches out on the couch in front of Natasha, his head and chest a comforting weight against her stomach, a reminder that she is whole, at least in this part of the multiverse.

When Angel Martelli hits the screen Steve murmurs, “Aww, Peg was right, she’s amazing,” and wears a faint smile as he watches. Her Hungarian accent is surprisingly great for a low budget production shot in Hertfordshire in the late sixties, and onscreen she has chemistry with everyone. Even the horses. Even the balsa wood furniture. She traces the tip of her nose down the neck of her young consort, the doomed strawberry blonde Carmilla, crooning, _“It's not safe with me, darling.”_

Natasha runs her fingernail down from Bruce’s ear to the hollow of his throat, feeling the ticklish tremor of him between her thighs as he murmurs, “Stop that.”

_“My love,”_ Carmilla pleads, clutching emerald handfuls of her mistress Elizabeth’s crushed velvet gown. “ _Then why do I feel so safe?_ ”

“Because your village didn’t believe in educating women,” Pepper answers.

“Shh, the necking’s about to start.” Tony shoves a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

Elizabeth bares her teeth, canines nearly as prominent now as her stunning cleavage, _“Because you know I would kill to protect you...”_

Bruce pulls Natasha’s hand from his neck and laces their fingers.

Tony’s “Yeah, that’s the stuff,” is muffled by popcorn and Pepper’s snort.

_“...that I would die for you. That's how we will end, my love.”_

Carmilla swoons, head thrown back like an ecstatic saint, _“Then let us end!”_


End file.
